Bad Enough That Kamala Harris Wants to Spend Trillions—Now She Wants Forced Unionization

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in a Feb. 7, 2019, file photograph. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Commentary

The Democrat presidential candidates, including Kamala Harris, are busy trying to buy the votes of Americans with huge spending programs. Apparently, that is not enough. Harris also wants to hobble the America labor market in a bid to get union endorsements.

The national debt is over $22 trillion. In the old days, politicians worried about such things. The current crop of Democrat hopefuls does not. As I wrote in January, they are offering voters trillions in new spending programs in a bidding war for votes.

Harris is all in on that bidding war. She supports Medicare for All despite its $3.2 trillion yearly price tag. She also wants “families making less than $100,000 a year” to be “eligible for a monthly tax credit of up to $500, or $6,000 a year.” Not satisfied with that spending, she is promising $315 billion dollars in new spending for teacher salaries.

There is little doubt that such spending would balloon that $22 trillion in debt. There simply is no way to raise taxes to pay for such spending. Higher tax rates of that magnitude would decimate long term growth rates as the economy stagnated.

Harris does stop there however. She said she “would use the “bully pulpit” to fight “right-to-work” laws, describing them as an attack on workers’ rights.” What does that mean in practice? Well, according to Harris that means “banning right-to-work laws.”

According to the National Right to Work Committee, right-to-work laws affirm “the right of every American to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union” or pay union dues. Over half our states have right to work laws.

Harris’ home state, California, is an at-will work state. That law allows that “either the employer or the employee may terminate employment at any time, with or without cause or prior notice.” It is one of the few employer friendly laws in California and has helped foster the growth of the Silicon Valley.

Any such laws would likely fall by the wayside if Harris gets her forced unionization. Forced unionization also means higher labor costs, inclusive of European-style strikes. There was already a record number of strikes in America last year, in significant part because of government labor unions.

Of course, simple economics will tell you that higher labor costs will result in reduced employment nationwide and slower economic growth. Under the Obama Administration slow growth predictably meant poor wage growth. It also reduced federal revenues which increased the national debt.

Now that wage growth is on the rise because of an expanding economy, the Democrats running for president, including Harris, want to kill that growth off with more regulations and forced unionization. They literally want to turn back the clock and balloon the national debt by reducing economic growth in addition to their runaway spending.

As for American employers, the real question is whether they will sit on the sidelines while the Democrats plan for a European Union future for America.

Thomas Del Beccaro is the author of “The Divided Era” and is a former chairman of the California Republican Party.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.