Keeping the unions fat and happy at your expense

Feds gave AFL's non-profit $28.5 million; U.S. Chamber's non-profit got zilch
By: Mark Tapscott

Among the most important sub-texts in the year-long national debate over Obamacare has been the massive support for the proposal by organized labor and the opposition of most of the business community.
Erick Erickson, the dough-faced, take-no-prisoners proprietor of the Redstate.com blog and CNN's newest political analyst, offers an interesting tidbit of information that helps illuminate the Labor vs Business factor in the Obamacare debate. Seems the chief organized labor non-profit is the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity, aka the Solidarity Center.
According to the center's 2009 annual report, it received $28.5 million in federal grants, with portions coming from the U.S. Department of Labor. the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief, the Center for Disease Control, and the Agency for International Development.
The AFL-CIO's contribution to its non-profit was a mere $600,000. Other non-government grants came from the Academy for Educational Development, and Family Health International.
In other words, the AFL-CIO's non-profit gets approximately 96 percent of its $30 million annual budget in 2008 came from U.S. taxpayers via grants from federal agencies. Even if the AFL-CIO did not have a longstanding ideological comittment to government-run health care for all Americans, does anybody really think they would oppose the signature program of the party in power, which virtually funds its world-wide foundation operations?
Fat chance, right?
Now, contrast that with the amount of taxpayer dollars directed by federal agencies to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's chief non-profit, the National Chamber Foundation - Zero. Zilch. Nada. The National Chamber Foundation's total revenues for 2008 were $4.7 million.