STOP PORK AND STOP UNIONS FROM RAIDING ANY HURRICANE SANDY RELIEF FUNDS

Dear Conservatives,

The federal government is currently considering an aid package to assist states impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Such efforts have been abused in the past to shuttle wasteful and unnecessary pork barrel spending completely unrelated to the disaster.  Congress must ensure each dollar obligated for hurricane relief actually goes to aiding victims—not to political special interests. This means prohibiting any funds from being used to underwrite the inflated costs of labor agreements.

Take Action Now to urge Congress to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act to save US taxpayers millions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy recovery projects.

We must ensure the wise use of taxpayer money. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 requires that local prevailing wages be paid for public works projects. In a state like New Jersey, that could mean paying labor union employees more than twice as much for the same work that out-of-state employees may charge.

Urge Congress to suspend the Davis-Bacon Act to save US taxpayers millions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy recovery projects.

Suspending the Davis-Bacon Act is not unprecedented. We have suspended the Act four times; twice for hurricane damage recovery efforts and, most notably, as part of the recovery efforts passed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The benefit to a suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act is that the free market will save US taxpayers millions of dollars by allowing competitive bidding for recovery efforts.

Onward,

Grover G. Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform