According to the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund, the U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20 percent from the budget of the Office of Labor Management Standards. This is the Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law.

“Businesses have spent billions of dollars to comply with the Sarbanes Oxley law and significantly expanded SEC regulations,” Maryland Chamber State Taxation Consultant Karen Syrylo said. “It boggles my mind that the Congress would cut the budget of the agency that protects union members from corruption and administers the small disclosure requirements labor unions face.”

According to Fund, “GOP Rep. John Kline of Minnesota will offer an amendment Thursday to restore $3 million of the $11 million planned cutback in OLMS’s budget, so its budget would merely be restored to its 2007 level. Whatever sums are spent on union disclosure reports appear to be a good investment. Unions held $22 billion in assets in 2005, and you’d think that a modest enforcement budget, representing less than 0.003% of that amount shouldn’t be the only target for cuts by budget appropriators.”

Read Fund’s entire column here.

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