The House is scheduled to vote this week on a Labor Department budget that is almost $1 billion over what the Administration has requested. Every enforcement agency within the department is slated for a budget increase.

Every agency, that is, except one. The Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) is actually slated for a 20% budget cut.

Why the seemingly incongruous act of fiscal restraint?

The editorial page of today's Wall Street Journal suggests that it may very well have to do with the fact that OLMS is the agency that monitors unions' compliance with federal laws:

"In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration's budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight."

The full editorial can be found here.

Maybe we can convince the Democrats to help us control the rampant growth of government by convincing them that other agencies are adding to the "burdensome and unnecessary" regulations faced by their Union backers.

Posted By: House Conservatives Fund at 12:13:37 PM

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