Rick Allen: “What we have in this Republican leadership bill is a worker gag rule. The Center for Responsive Politics has determined…”

“What we have in this Republican leadership bill is a worker gag rule. The Center for Responsive Politics has determined that in the last cycle businesses outspent labor by 10 to 1, and notwithstanding that 10 to 1 differential, the Republicans are determined to try to gag unions. Let me give a couple of examples. They have established a rule where essentially union members would have to give prior consent, individual prior consent, to the use of any portion of their union dues for political kinds of activities. That does not mean just running ads, it means educating their own membership, putting out material to their own membership to tell them what issues are coming up that may affect their jobs and their lives, their health, and all of those issues that we deal with here in this Congress. They say that they are trying to impose the same restrictions on corporations as they do on unions, but it is not true. It is not balanced and it is not fair. With respect to unions, the burden of proof is against the union.”