Teachers Unions Fail to Secure Pork for Public Employees

It appears the millions of dollars the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers spent electing President Obama and a Democratic Congress is turning out to be a bad investment, because the Democrats in power failed to deliver the $10 billion “education jobs fund” for the unions.

Even the trimmed amount, originally $23 billion, was more than election-weary Democrats could handle and they removed the pork spending from the Afghanistan appropriations bill.

According to Politico, the Senate-passed version of the bill, minus the education pork, will now head back to the House, where leaders are anticipating quick passage so troops won’t be left stranded in the battlefield.

Thank goodness.

Now the teachers unions will see how the other half lives. They, and the school districts they strong-arm, will have to made do within their means, just like American families and businesses.

Previous reports indicated that if the Afghanistan bill strategy failed, Big Labor would seek other methods, such as attaching the public school bailout to the unemployment extension. That bill has been passed and signed, so that idea has failed, too. The unions’ “vehicle bill” ideas are growing fewer and fewer as the Congress wraps up legislative work to return home and defend its record.

Democrats could use this vote as evidence of their willingness to reign in spending. But, of course, it comes at the expense of one of their biggest campaign funders.