Joe’s Pay-to-Play ‘Infrastructure’

CBS’s “60 Minutes” just got caught falsely accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of a pay-to-play scheme, which raises the question of why major media aren’t flagging the ginormous pay-to-play aspect of President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which dumps vast sums on the unions that helped elect him.

It’s an old scheme that runs both ways. Unions donate overwhelmingly to Democrats and help get out the vote, then get vast favors. Open Secrets records $245 million in labor contributions in the 2020 cycle, with nearly 90 percent of it going to Democrats, up from $217 million in the 2016 cycle. The two biggest teachers’ unions spent $43 million alone.

Add the indirect funding: The Service Employees International Union last year vowed to spend $150 million on get-out-the-vote efforts for Dems. “Biden’s path to the White House ran through America’s labor movement,” crowed the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka.

In return, Dems give Big Labor new unionfriendly laws and regulations, huge subsidies — and overturn right-to-work laws.

Biden’s “infrastructure” plan is a huge payoff to his union backers. Its single-largest line item is $400 billion for home-care workers, while pushing them into the arms of the SEIU, which already reps nearly a million. Much of the rest of the $2 trillion goes for construction jobs that must either use union labor or — much the same thing — offer “prevailing wages,” which is basically a euphemism for union pay rates.

And his plan even explicitly says it’ll spend money to “promote union organizing and collective bargaining.” Biden also wants to take out right-to-work laws in the 27 states that have passed them, forcing people to pay dues to unions they don’t want to join.

It’s pay-to-play on a trillion-dollar scale.