Since taking office, Pres. Barack Obama has shown a remarkable penchant for changing the law by fiat. From Citizenship and Immigration Services’ debating how best to let the maximum number of illegal aliens off the hook to the EPA’s declaring it would treat carbon-dioxide emissions as a pollutant, the administration has taken the stance that votes in Congress aren’t really necessary, even for dramatically contentious subjects. Who needs a debate and a vote when you can rule by regulatory decree?

One critically important example of this was the 2010 decision by the National Mediation Board — a body whose three members are appointed by the president — that made it far easier for airline and railroad unions to take power over those industries by changing the way union elections are held. This week, the House is considering a law that would reverse the decision. The law deserves support without reservation, and the House’s vote will be a sign of what’s to come from the new Congress on labor.

The dispute can be traced back to the Railway Labor Act, a 1926 law that made it relatively difficult for railroad workers to unionize — the idea being that without serious limits on union power, labor organizations could hold the nation’s crucial transportation infrastructure hostage to unreasonable demands. The following decade, none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the law to cover America’s emerging airline sector as well…

See the rest at National Review.

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