The $3.5 trillion spending blowout announced by Senate Democrats will include the job-killing “Protecting the Right to Organize Act,” according to media reports. 

The PRO Act would benefit Big Labor at the expense of the American worker. The PRO Act’s inclusion in the spending blowout gives further insight into the Senate Democrats’ proposal, the details of which are below: 

• The PRO Act nullifies Right to Work laws across the country, which protect 166 million Americans in 27 states. Right to Work laws prevent employers from being able to force workers to join a union as a condition of employment. If Right to Work laws were banned, every American worker would be forced to choose between paying a union boss and putting food on the table.

• The PRO Act enacts a stringent three-step test that would force independent contractors to reclassify as W-2 employees. This would jeopardize the livelihoods of the more than 59 million Americans that engage in freelance work.

• Codify the NLRB’s disastrous 2015 Browning-Ferris Industries decision that muddled the definition of “joint-employer,” overturning decades of labor law precedent. If implemented, this would decimate the franchise business model that employs 7.6 million Americans in 733,000 locations.

• Change union elections to allow union bosses to collect cards from workers to demonstrate support for the union, rather than holding a secret ballot election. If labor bosses fail to unionize a workplace via a secret ballot election, the union can appeal to the NLRB for a second chance to unionize the workplace.

• Violate worker privacy by forcing employers to give union organizers sensitive employee contact information, including home addresses, cell phone, shift information and landline numbers, and email addresses. This would allow union bosses to intimidate workers into joining unions at homes or workplaces. 

In addition, the PRO Act would increase costs for employers, harming businesses and consumers. According to the American Action Forum, the independent contractor provision would impact 8.5% of GDP and cost between $3.5 billion and $12.1 billion annually. The joint employer provision would cost between $17.2 billion and $33.3 billion annually for the franchise business sector and affect 44% of private sector employees. Finally, the provision that restricts employers from replacing strikers permanently could cost employers an additional $1.9 billion every year.

The PRO Act is a return on the investment of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Big Labor poured into the Democrat party's campaigns to capture the House, Senate, and White House. Employers will be able to force workers into unions as a condition of employment, and union bosses will have access to personal information to bully workers into compliance. Tens of millions of independent contractors would face losing their jobs.

Washington state legislators are making their latest attempt to impose an unconstitutional income tax on its residents. With the passage of S.B. 5096, Washington residents may soon be subject to a 7% tax on the sale of stocks, bonds, businesses, and other investments whose profits exceed $250,000. 

Progressives have long tried to impose an income tax on Washingtonians. However, since the passage of a 1930 constitutional amendment that made all taxes “uniform upon the same class of property,” with property defined as “everything, whether tangible or intangible, subject to ownership,” Washington has successfully evaded every attempt to impose an income tax. Just two years after the passage of the 1930 amendment, a graduated income tax was ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court – a precedent that holds today. Courts also struck down a 2017 Seattle ordinance establishing a progressive income tax. 

That hasn’t stopped legislators from repeatedly proposing an income tax to voters. Since 1930, Washington voters have defeated 10 ballot measures to impose a personal or corporate income. Most were rejected by a resounding 2/3 majority. Voters expressed their opposition most recently in 2010 with a 64-36% vote against a state income tax – even though it would only have affected income higher than $200,000 and reduced other taxes in return. 

Washingtonians have frequently made their preferences clear. But this year, politicians have shrewdly labeled their capital gains tax legislation as an excise tax. Excise taxes are imposed on the sale of specific goods and services. They’re legal under the state constitution – in fact, the state already imposes a real estate excise tax that ranks as the highest in the region. Democrats insist that the labeling ploy will allow the capital gains tax to withstand scrutiny in the courts, where several lawsuits have already been filed by the Freedom Foundation and the Opportunity for All Coalition. 

But capital gains are already considered income in every other state that taxes them. According to the IRS, capital gains are taxable as income since “almost everything you own and use for personal purposes, pleasure, business or investment is a capital asset” – including your home, stocks, jewelry, and business property. 

“The Washington Constitution is unambiguous,” said Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe. “Taxpayers can’t be treated differently based on the amount of their income.  It’s both punitive and illegal.” Indeed, besides its unconstitutional status as an income tax, the capital gains tax would not be uniform, as is required under the constitution. Moreover, the Freedom Foundation points out in its lawsuit that the capital gains tax is unlawful under the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution because it treats all sales of capital by Washington residents as taxable gains – including sales that occurred out-of-state. 

Democrats have also carefully worded their legislation to ensure that voters will not have the opportunity to consider it as a referendum. Allowing voters to have a say could seriously endanger the capital gains tax proposal – judging by history, voters would likely make it the 11th consecutive income tax proposal to fail. So, Democrats wrote an emergency clause into the law, thereby prohibiting voters from collecting signatures and mobilizing against the new tax in a referendum movement. With the inclusion of the phrase that the bill is “necessary for the support of state government and its existing public institutions,” Democrats have insulated the proposal from the likelihood that it will appear on the ballot in November. The courts, not the people, are now left to decide the validity of the tax. 

Rather than tiptoeing around the state constitution to create an income tax, Washington legislators should look to their record state revenues to advance their priorities. Washington has more than $3.8 billion in surplus funds, primarily as a result of Covid-era policies. 12 states across the country, including regional competitors like Arizona, Wisconsin, and Montana, used their surpluses to cut taxes across the board, often on both income and property. 

If enacted, a capital gains tax will ultimately create a less competitive business environment in the state of Washington. Entrepreneurs in Washington will start looking to business-friendly states like Florida, Texas, and regional competitors, rather than subject themselves to a high capital gains tax on their burgeoning profits. Rather than hobbling their competitive advantage and burdening their residents with a historic new tax, Washington should follow the example of these states and promote pro-growth, low-tax policies to facilitate a flourishing economy. 

Included in the $3.5 trillion spending package announced by Senate Democrats on Tuesday is funding for the creation of a uniformed “Civilian Climate Corps” tasked with the vague mission of “advancing environmental justice.”

The Civilian Climate Corps’ (CCC) inclusion in the package is a major concession to far-left environmental advocates calling for the creation of the CCC as a year one priority of the Green New Deal while lauding the “government jobs” it would create for climate activists. 

The CCC is a make-work program for progressive activists complete with free government housing and transportation to work. Enrollees would be paid to wag their finger and lecture taxpayers on climate change activism. CCC members would be the government-stamped Hall Monitors of the Green New Deal. 

The CCC's inclusion in the Democrats’ spending package comes after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer vowed last week that he would “work tirelessly to achieve a big and bold Civilian Climate Corps that places justice at the center and urgently addresses our interlocking climate and economic crisis.”

Details on the level of proposed funding for the CCC are not yet available, but President Biden’s own proposal previously called for $10 billion in new spending while progressive House members such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have called for a number as high as $132 billion to hire 1.5 million climate activists.

While details are still forthcoming, the plan is modeled off of the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act introduced by House Democrats last Congress.

The legislation provides further insight into Senate Democrats' proposal, the details of which are below:

Taxpayer-funded housing, clothing, and feeding of Climate Corps members. 

According to the legislation, taxpayers would be responsible for paying the cost of Climate Corps members’ housing, clothing, feeding, allowance, and medical expenses. Nothing screams good-paying jobs like an “allowance” from the government. Here it is straight from the bill’s text:

“The President may provide housing for persons employed in the Civilian Conservation Corps and furnish them with such subsistence, clothing, medical attendance and hospitalization, and cash allowance, as may be necessary, during the period they are so employed.”

Taxpayer-funded transportation to “work” for Climate Corps members.

Not only will the government provide food, clothing, housing, and an allowance, it will also pick up members of the Climate Corps and drive them to work for them. 

"The President may provide for the transportation of persons employed in the Civilian Conservation Corps to and from the places of employment."

Allows President Biden to seize private property through land condemnation.

President Biden would be empowered to seize public land deemed necessary to construct projects authorized under the bill.

“The President, or the head of any department or agency authorized by the President to construct any project or to carry on any public works under this Act, may acquire real property for such project or public work by purchase, donation, condemnation, or otherwise.”

Jobs are prioritized for individuals who have already used up unemployment benefits 

According to the text of the legislation, the President shall prioritize “unemployed citizens who have exhausted their entitlement to unemployment compensation,” over other citizens still “eligible for unemployment compensation payable under any State law or Federal unemployment compensation law.”

80 percent of funding used on employment, not conservation. 

While the Biden administration claims the proposal is about conservation and addressing climate change, the legislation mandates that 80 percent of funding is to be used just on the salaries of staff.

“Not less than 80 percent of the funds utilized pursuant to paragraph (1) must be used to provide for the employment of individuals under this Act.”

Based on a failed 1930’s program that housed “employees” in military camps.

The effort is reportedly an attempt by the Biden administration to revive a long-defunct jobs program created in 1933 as part of the New Deal and similarly titled the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). In 1937, shortly after the CCC’s creation, Congress elected to phase out funding for the program, officially ending the CCC in 1942.

According to a September report from the Congressional Research Service, The CCC was a government employment program for unemployed males aged 18-25 in which “enrollees were recruited, hired, and trained by the federal government, worked under federal supervision, lived in government-run military camps, and received stipends paid for with federal funding.”

CCC was extremely accident-prone.

It turns out taking untrained youths and asking them to perform manual labor in the wilderness is a dangerous idea. “Given the nature of the work (“most of which consisted of manual labor”) and the inexperience of most enrollees, accidents were inevitable,” according to a National Archives report cataloging the accident reports of the CCC program.

According to the report, over 7,600 workplace accidents were filed during the CCC’s short existence and included several workplace deaths and life-threatening injuries. The report details cases of drownings and construction accidents. 

House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is pushing discussion draft legislation that would impose unnecessary new reporting requirements on institutional investors. This new regulatory burden would do little to solve the perceived problems being discussed by the Left. Instead, these requirements would impose duplicative, needless compliance burdens on investors that would undermine the free market and threaten retirement security for millions of Americans. 

Rep. Waters wants to expand existing 13F reporting requirements that exist under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 so that any short or long position in equities or in derivatives needs to be reported. This is part of a concerted effort from the Left to take aim at institutional investors. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler has also said he wants to impose new disclosure requirements on short selling through regulatory authority.  

The new reporting requirements are duplicative and unnecessary. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 requires SEC to adopt rules that increase transparency in the market. This process is already underway through the SEC Regulation Reporting and Dissemination of Security-Based Swap Information (SBSR), rules designed to enhance price discovery, create transparency, and lower transaction costs. 

Given the existence of this regulatory framework, it makes little sense for Congress to impose additional requirements.

New reporting requirements would not solve the problems the Left claims it would. SEC staff have explained that increasing the disclosure of short and long positions would have little or no use to them.

A June 2014 study by the staff of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis of the SEC concluded that, “… the Division believes that Real-Time Short Position Reporting would provide regulators with little additional information than would be available from CAT.”   

Current reporting provides regulators access to short sale transaction information within a single day – so the problem is not a lack of data. Additional reporting requirements are a solution in search of a problem.

New reporting requirements will be devastating to tens of millions of Americans who depend on institutional investors for retirement and income. The costs of this new regulatory burden will not be absorbed by institutional investors, instead it will be passed along to the millions of Americans that rely on investments for their retirement savings. Pension funds, mutual funds, charities, and others rely on stock lending to earn millions of dollars for Americans across the country.

According to the Managed Funds Association, pensions, university endowments, and nonprofit foundations invest more than $1.4 trillion in hedge funds, a quarter of all U.S. pension assets. This investment vehicle provided strong returns for retirees -- for instance, actively managed hedge funds outperformed the S&P 500 index by nearly 10% during the 2020 market crash.  

At a time when retirement insecurity is a growing problem, these reporting requirements would contribute to the issue further.

In California alone, hedge funds deliver for pensions, colleges, and nonprofits through $164.5 billion in investments. California State Teachers' Retirement System, which invests $15.1 billion in hedge funds, covers 1,209,590 teachers.  

In New York, hedge funds deliver for pensions, colleges, and nonprofits through $121.5 billion in investments. New York State Common Retirement Fund and New York City Police Pension Fund invest $15.6 billion in hedge funds, covering 1,157,643 participants. In Texas, hedge funds deliver for pensions, colleges, and nonprofits through $115 billion in investments. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas invests $14.1 billion, covering 1,629,682 Texas teachers.  

More public disclosure could also essentially force investors to reveal their trading strategies, compromising their ability to manage market risk exposure. It would also lead to others copying their strategies, reducing their return on the immense amount of research they do. This would reduce possible returns, which would harm the retirement security for millions of Americans.

New reporting requirements would play havoc with the free market. While there is little utility to expanding 13F reporting requirements, it would disrupt the natural functions of a free market.

For instance, these new reporting requirements could result in short-sellers facing public shaming and retaliation.  

The fact is, there is nothing to fear from short selling, as it is a common function of the free market. An investor will short a stock when they believe it to be overvalued.  

In-depth empirical research has found that short selling is not responsible for market crashes and economic downturns. Instead, it provides efficiency and information to markets, ultimately softening the blow of a downturn. The 2008 market crash could have been far more widespread if short-sellers hadn’t recognized the housing market was overvalued. Rather than solving market volatility, these reporting requirements could make the market more volatile and exacerbate the pain felt during future market crashes. 

In extreme cases, short selling can help expose corruption. In the past, short-sellers have been instrumental in uncovering corporate fraud such as the Enron and Wirecard cases.  

Rep. Waters' bill to impose new regulatory requirements is completely unnecessary. This legislation would provide little or no useful information to regulators and would instead harm Americans’ retirement securit and remove important market signals that expose corruption and soften the blow of economic downturns.