First the political class came for the bonuses and corporate jets. Now the First Amendment?




"It is shameful that the Roundtable makes lobbying against the right of workers to organize a legislative priority and, worse yet, is using taxpayer-financed TARP subsidies to do so," wrote Ms. Burger, whose group includes the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, among others.

The government has in the past restricted the use of federal funds to directly lobby Congress. But Ms. Burger wants to extend this to any organization that somehow takes money from Uncle Sam. In the case of the banks, capital injections have gone to the balance sheet with a goal of aiding financial stability and increasing lending. The point wasn't to micromanage how banks spend every dollar.

But if Big Labor wants to limit speech, why stop at the bankers? The unions, including those that belong to Change to Win, get plenty of government money for their affiliates to run job training and other programs. For that matter, many employees of companies that have received bailout cash -- General Motors or Chrysler, say -- use some of their wages to pay union dues. The unions then use those dues to become major political players at election time -- to the tune of $450 million in the last election cycle, and that's the amount they admit to spending. If banks can't lobby against card check, the United Auto Workers ought to be banned from politics too.

The real goal of the Burger letter is to intimidate the people who oppose "card check," which is Big Labor's No. 1 priority but has mobilized business in united opposition because of the great harm it would do to the U.S. economy. We hope the banks tell Ms. Burger we still live in a free country, though sometimes it's hard to tell.


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