The Congressional Progressive Caucus recently released its agenda for 2025 and beyond. While the proposed trillions in new spending and crippling tax increases come as no surprise, the agenda is notable for its total rejection of the constitutional and free enterprise principles that enable prosperity and have made this country great. If enacted, this agenda would undo decades of economic progress and leave millions of Americans worse off.
The name Progressive Caucus is a misnomer for a group of elected officials who embrace with open arms numerous policies of failed socialist states that are antithetical to actual human progress. While the word socialism has at times been overused, there is no descriptor more accurate to characterize an agenda that would put the federal government in the businesses of manufacturing drugs and providing consumers bank accounts while also paying people not to work. These explicit command and control industries are in addition to numerous other further government expansions into energy, broadband, health care, housing, and agriculture, among others.
This post is the fourth in a series highlighting the most harmful proposals in the agenda. Previous posts covered the trillions in new taxes and spending; radical environmentalism; and extreme student loan policies. are available here and here.
Increase (Un)Employment
Not content with leaving any major industries untouched, the socialist caucus proposes to more than double the minimum wage and eliminate the tipped minimum wage in order to decimate retail and service industries. We’ve catalogued the harms of similar proposals at the state level, which include reduced hours, lower eligibility for benefits and less consistent schedules for employees as well as higher prices and more confusion for customers. Ironically, it’s not clear if the reduced hours effect is unintentional or by design, because the proposal later suggests shortening the workweek to “create more employment.”
Labor Quid Pro Quo
In order to combat the decades-long decline in union membership, the socialist caucus proposes the federal government further stack the deck in favor of big labor thugs by repealing state right to work laws, which are in place in more than half the states. While labor unions generally remain popular, a majority of non-union workers have no interest in actually joining one. The socialist caucus has a solution for that! By repealing right to work laws, they would force workers to join unions whether they want to or not. Last year an extreme ruling from the National Labor Relations Board declared that NLRB can impose a union on employers and employees even when the employees collectively voted not to unionize. The NLRB’s extremism coupled with the socialists’ radical agenda would mean a loss for worker freedom. Union dues can cost workers thousands of dollars out of their pockets, and if the socialists get their way, the workers would have no say in whether to pay them.
Even workers in non-union industries would pay the price (literally), as the socialists propose using tax dollars to pay striking workers. The government subsidizing union strikes is so radical that even Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar plan in California last year. Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of policymakers learned the hard way that paying people not to work is detrimental to the economy. Apparently the socialists didn’t get the memo.
As if all of these changes were not bad enough, the socialists would abuse the federal contracting process to further subsidize and prop up big labor. Why go through all of this effort to prop up unions? Because they are a billion dollar golden goose for leftist candidates.