From the San Diego Union-Tribune-Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The SEUI Payoff-President Obama to California: Drop Dead
California has immense fiscal problems. That’s not exactly news, but this is: President Obama could soon make these problems far worse. The beackground: In February, as part of overall spending cuts, the Legislature lowered the state’s maximum contribution to the pay of 300,000 unionized In Home Supportive Services health workers. This saved $74 million.
Most state employees were also subject to pay cuts. But after an Apr 15 conference call involving Obama administration officials, aises to Gov. Schwarzenegger adn reps of the SErvice Employees International Union, the White House threatened to withhold $6.8 billion in federal stimulus funds unless the Legislature and the governor canceled the home health workers’ pay cut before it begins July 1st.
The ostensible reason is an inventive reading of language restricting how stimulus money can be used. A more plausible reason is the SEIU’s political clout. It gave $33 million to the Obama presidential campaign. …
Then there is the bombshell April 13 investigation by the Los Angeles Times that found the $5.4 billion In HOme Supportive Services program to be riddled by fraud. Attempts to investigate this fraud are severely limited. Why? Almost certainly because of SEIU political pressure during the drafting of bills dealing with in-home care…
Beyond these specific concerns, there is a much larger issue: the appropriateness of the Obama adminstration’s use of stimulus funds as a tool of coercion. …We think far fewer members of Congress would have backed the $787 billion stimulus bill if they knew this is how the president would use it. For all these reasons and more, the Obama administration must deop its intervention into Ca and other states’ politics. What’s gone on to date isn’t just disappoining and disturbing. It’s scandalous.
