Political Quotes

“My amendment would prohibit paying any Federal employee for the time spent not working for the taxpayers but working for a third party, a labor union. This practice is known as ``official time.'' {time} 1915 Unlike any other type of third-party organization, labor unions have been granted the privilege of being able to have taxpayer-funded employees do their business on duty time, instead of doing the taxpayers' work. Like any other type of private entity, labor unions should pay for their own employees to work for them. The taxpayers should not be picking up the tab for this practice. According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, this practice costs taxpayers approximately $156 million per year. That is assuming that the agencies are correctly reporting the amounts spent, and there have been indications that this number actually underreports the total cost. In some instances, we are not talking about just a few minutes here and there for an agency employee who is a union official to confer with management about a workplace issue. Sometimes, the agency employee is actually working full time for the labor union, all the while being paid by the taxpayers for this union work. For instance, the IRS has more than 200 employees working full time for labor unions; the VA has over 250 employees working full time for labor unions--this at a time when there is a significant backlog of cases to be processed.…”