Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner has a great piece today…

When it comes to accounting, the devil is in the details. A new Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) rule taking effect in December requires greater transparency for union pension plans and threatens to bankrupt organized labor.

In order to survive, unions need a bailout and fast. This presents a political problem — if unions go bankrupt, so do Democrats. Eleven of the top 20 largest political contributors are labor unions, and nearly all of that money is spent campaigning against Republicans.

By bailing out unions, Democrats are bailing out themselves.

Unions have known for years that their multiemployer pension plans have unfunded liabilities that could run hundreds of billions of dollars.

That’s why unions have been loath to accurately report their pension liabilities — requiring transparency could devastate whole industries as banks and creditors will likely refuse to lend money to companies on the hook for such outrageous pension obligations.

Fortunately for them, it’s much cheaper for unions to buy the White House and Congress than to fund their pensions properly. Even by their normally profligate standards, unions went for broke in 2008, spending $400 million electing Democrats. In 2010, “Democrats are relying more than ever this year on another outside force to help even the playing field: organized labor,” reports the New York Times…

Read the rest at Washington Examiner.

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