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Show THE VOICE OF BUSINESS Who srepressnfls vhe ranEi arad va!e? By Richard L. Lesher, President Chamber of Commerce of the United States Just recently, I reported on a special agreement called the "National Accord" Ac-cord" worked out between the White House and the leadership of organized labor. In bidding for labor's election year support, the White House granted the AFL-CIO heirarchy an unprecedented un-precedented opportunity to influence the content of the fiscal 1981 budget. 'The result was a document the President Presi-dent called "prudent and responsible" in which federal spending overall, and by the Department of Labor in particular, par-ticular, would actually soar by 16 percent. per-cent. Now all that has changed. With inflation infla-tion and interest rates climbing out of sight, the Adminstration has had to swallow hard, renounce its "prudent and responsible" budget and submit still another. This latest budget will supposedly be balanced, thanks to about $4 billion in spending reductions, but more than $90 billion in tax increases in-creases between now and the end of -fiscal 1981. Indeed, the word around town is that the Administration is finally final-ly determined to balance its budget even if it takes every cent we have! The reaction of labor's leadership has ' been highly revealing. Rather than condemn con-demn the huge tax increases which will obviously have a devastating impact on its own rank and file as well as on millions of other taxpayers it has v stead criticized the Administrate few feeble attempts to cut federal spt '. ding. Indeed, so upset is labor's leadi 1 ship with these proposed spendi;' reductions, that it now threatens to p out of the National Accord a ? withdraw its political support frc,i members of Congress who back the f. ministration. ", Labor's priorities then are clear: T 0 federal budget must remain high, ev at the expense of severely compr'om '.' ing the after-tax earnings of workk America. This attitude helps expU why the leaders of organized labor increasingly out of touch with their o -membership. - Every time labor's leadership push :. ; for more government spending, ni j programs and higher deficits, the pi , pie who benefit most are the memlx of its rapidly growing governing employee unions. Those w,' automatically pay the bill, throu' higher taxes and inflation, are the uni j and non-union people working in ( , private economy. Most thoughtful Americans n agree that our economy is being hurt , a federal bureaucracy that continues -grow faster than the ability of (' underlying economy to support it. D ing just the four fiscal years of this ' minsitration, for example, fede.T spending will soar from $400 billion J $600 billion. Seen in another light, I federal budget will have grown half much during these four years as it during all the previous 188. Keep' ; mind, as well, that this tremendous-' crease in federal spending has been : companied by a precipitous plunge"-the plunge"-the rates of savings, investment r-productivitiye r-productivitiye i.e., all the key cc -ponents of non-inflationary econor -growth and prosperity. One-need not be an economic exp:-: to understand that fundamental chai: -' in direction is needed. It's time---strengthen America and create a I -ger pie by restoring tax incentives -; greater work efforts and new savi -and investment. Unfortunately, labi -leadership rejects even this rr" elementary logic by trotting out all. -j old hackneyed slogans from the 193. ; claiming such initiatives favor the i- over the poor. -j Fellows, you're peddeling intellect bunk. A recent article in : "Washington Post" pointed out t'--while the average worker has fa : steadily behind and his purchas power is no better today than 12 ye - ago, "large non-working dependents; tors of the population 40 million r-: pie in all have not lost ground." That's because the people in this 13 ter group, many of whom are welfare, receive benefits that are f : i indexed to the rate of inflation. -benefits, of course, are paid by t " payers the same people who are--ing clobbered by inflation and t ; fiscatory taxation. ; If the leaders of organized labor : -to show some genuine compas.'2 toward the American people, theyci begin by discarding their 50-year-i economic theories and addressing -3-realities of inflation and taxation in" real world of the 1980s. ' : |