The Wall Street Journal runs an editorial this morning about Senator Barack Obama’s support for something called the Patriot Employer Act – a bill that would punish employers who don’t abide Big Labor’s radical agenda for America.  According to Senator Obama’s bill, also co-sponsored by other liberal Senators, if you’re an employer who opposes union organizing, guess what? You’re not patriotic!  But if you are a “patriotic” employer – i.e. if you capitulate to Big Labor’s agenda – you are rewarded with a 1% tax credit on your profits.  The WSJ writes: 

Mr. Obama's proposal would designate certain companies as "patriot employers" and favor them over other, presumably not so patriotic, businesses.

The legislation takes four pages to define "patriotic" companies as those that: "pay at least 60 percent of each employee's health care premiums"; have a position of "neutrality in employee [union] organizing drives"; "maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in the United States relative to the number of full-time workers outside of the United States"; pay a salary to each employee "not less than an amount equal to the federal poverty level"; and provide a pension plan.

In other words, a patriotic employer is one which fulfills the fondest Big Labor agenda, regardless of the competitive implications.

This legislation would finance this “patriotic” tax break by forcing U.S. companies not in compliance with Big Labor’s demands to pay the U.S. corporate tax on profits they earn overseas instead of the usually lower corporate tax of the host country.  The net result is a huge tax increase for those companies that won’t play ball with Obama and the bosses. 

Samuel Johnson got it wrong.  Patriotism isn’t the last refuge of scoundrels, it’s the last refuge of…Big Labor.