What will they do?

Well, here we are. As of January 20, 2009, the Democrats will have a comfortable majority in both chambers of Congress, and they will have an occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. What will they do?

It’s easy to sit around all gloomy and doomy and fret about the coming dictatorship or about the arrival of Marxism to our shores, but let’s be a little realistic here. Given the current economic crisis, there isn’t going to be a whole lot of money to throw around without really tacking a lot more onto the budget defecit and the national debt. The current occupant of the White House has done a bang-up job of making sure that those two items are out of control. Although I’m sure there will be lots of additional spending, I don’t think it will be as bad as some are predicting.

Let’s consider this – now that the Democrats control both the White House and Congress, isn’t one of their primary goals going to be to make sure they stay in control for as long as possible? And aren’t they going to have to be a little judicious in how much money they throw around, lest the American Taxpayers boot them out of office, like we did to congressional Republicans two years ago?

So, what items on their agenda can they implement that would not be a big upfront burden on the taxpayers? Well, I’ve thought quite a bit about that one over the last week, and my primary suspect is the “Employee Free Choice Act”, otherwise known as Union Card Check. Kind of a cute name, don’t you think? “Employee Free Choice Act”. What they should really call it is the “Coerce and Harass Employees into Unionizing Act”.  In case you’re not familiar with this legislation, it would  allow union representatives to organize a group of employees simply by having a majority of said employees sign a card stating their intention to unionize.  In other words, no secret ballots.

So, how would this have a negative impact on the taxpayers?  Well, it wouldn’t, at least not in respect to our role as taxpayers.  It would, however, negatively impact us as consumers.  Let’s say that, come January, this legislation passes, and President Obama signs it.  Now let’s say one of the big unions decide to make a run at unionizing retail service employees.  Let’s say, just as an example, that they choose Wal-Mart employees.  Now let’s say that a majority of Wal-Mart employees exercise their “free choice”, and sign the union cards.  Let’s say the new union can’t come to terms with Wal-Mart, and the case goes before a federal arbitrator.  Let’s say the arbitrator rules in favor of the union.  Now, Wal-Mart employees are unionized.  Now what happens?

The union starts demanding better wages, more break times, better benefits, etc.  How will Wal-Mart respond?  Well, one way would be to raise prices to cover the increased payroll costs.  Another way would be to install more automated self-checkout lanes to cut back on the number of employees needed per store.  The result – higher prices at the retail level and higher unemployment rates.   How wonderful!!

This is one of the most likely things to happen in the next year.  Maybe not Wal-Mart, but Card Check is definitely coming in some form.  In relative terms, considering we have a three-trillion-dollar plus budget and an over ten-trillion-dollar national debt, this won’t be expensive for the government to do, and it will give a BIG payoff to the unions, whose leaders have been so loyal to the Democrats over the years.  Get ready, because here it comes.