David Drucker reports in today's Roll Call that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is planning to spend $100 million this year to elect pro-union liberals to the House, Senate, and White House.  The SEIU is hoping to deliver a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to Majority Leader Harry Reid, thinking that their ability to affect policy lies primarily in reducing Republican's ability to block pro-union legislation.  The SEIU isn't just targeting Republicans, however, they are also trying to unseat moderate Democrats who they feel have been ineffective at pushing the union agenda in the past.

A key element of the SEIU’s strategy involves paying 2,000 union members the equivalent of their salaries so they can take either a full- or part-time leave of absence from their jobs to work on Democratic campaigns in Congressional races the union has prioritized. Additionally, the SEIU plans to deploy about 100,000 volunteers into the field nationwide for voter-turnout activities.
 
“SEIU members are already working in districts across the country to support pro-worker candidates for Congress,” SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger said Monday. “We know that it’s not enough to elect a new president in November. We also need a majority in the House and Senate who will stand with working people.”
 
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, not surprised to hear that its candidates are being targeted by a labor union, insists that it that is prepared to hold its ground against an SEIU onslaught that could include television and radio ads, phone banks, direct mail and door-to-door get-out-the-vote activities.
 
“If there is one constant in Congressional campaigns, it is labor unions dumping millions into races on behalf of Democrats,” NRSC spokeswoman Rebecca Fisher said. “Our candidates will be well-prepared for this inevitability.”

With union membership dwindling, the only way unions believe they can rejuvenate their moribound movement is by spending their way to a liberal takeover of all levels of government - which would have disastrous consequences for all American workers.  Freedom's Watch will be there fighting them at every turn.

A Wall Street Journal editorial recaps last night's State of the Union Address, arguing that while this is Bush's final term in office, he still has more influence on the international stage than anyone else on the planet.  The Journal lauds the foreign policy sections of the speech last night - those dealing with Iraq, FISA reauthorization and free trade agreements.

Perhaps the best service Mr. Bush can do in his final months is push back against a public pessimism that could escalate into retreat from world leadership. This mood is partly fed by partisans who hope to ride this sour mood back to the White House, so the worse things seem the better for them. But we are hardly in dire straits at home or abroad. Our economy is slowing but not in recession and its resilience may yet see us through the housing crash without one.

Most important, in the last year we have fought back from the brink of defeat in Iraq. The credit belongs mainly to our soldiers and Marines, but credit also goes to Mr. Bush for surging troops despite furious political opposition and the seductive exit ramp offered by the Beltway's Iraq Study Group. That decision may be his Presidency's finest hour.

The Journal also argues strongly against Senate Democrats blocking FISA reauthorization legislation four days before our ability to monitor foreign terrorists is set to expire.  Freedom's Watch agrees.  It would be the height of irresponsibility to let this important tool to fight terrorism lapse.

It strains credibility to believe, as Majority Leader Harry Reid claims, that the Senate needs another month to do what it couldn't in the past six. But Mr. Reid and his fellow Democrats are under intense pressure from the far left to deny Mr. Bush this authority. The tort bar, meanwhile, wants to preserve its ability to sue telephone companies for assisting the program in the days after 9/11.

The junior Senator from New York, in a statement that can only be called Clintonian, said before the vote that the bill was "important legislation that would modernize our surveillance laws and give our nation's intelligence professionals the tools they need to fight terrorism and make our country more secure." But she voted against cloture anyway, along with all but three of her Democratic colleagues.

If she and Mr. Reid want a debate, then by all means, let's have it. Let's debate right up to November whether judges should have to give their approval before our spooks can listen in on al Qaeda. Then maybe the American people can decide if holding our war-fighting capability hostage to the left and the tort bar makes them feel safer.

The Los Angeles Times is reporting on the limited agenda set forth by Congressional Leadership for the coming year.  It seems that after suffering a series of defeats in the last session, liberals in Congress are now scaling back their efforts on domestic priorities and are focusing on ways to limit the war in Iraq rather than end it. 

Gone are the grandiose promises of legislation to bring the troops home from Iraq, which dominated the Democratic agenda last year and nearly ground business on Capitol Hill to a halt.

Today, senior Democrats are talking of simply requiring the president to seek congressional approval for any agreement with the Iraqi government to maintain U.S. forces in the country past next year.

There is little talk of rewriting the tax code or dramatically expanding access to health insurance, and no discussion of reviving the effort to overhaul immigration laws.

"We have the presidential election. We have a number of very important House and Senate races," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last week. "Our time is really squeezed."