Left-leaning nonprofits receive taxpayer dollars in three key ways—through government contracts and grants, indirectly through government unions, and through taxpayer-funded union time—Daily Signal Senior Editor Tyler O’Neil told a House panel Tuesday.
“Federal employees in a union give part of their taxpayer-funded paychecks to the union, ostensibly for representation in bargaining for perks like working from home. Yet instead of using all the money to help employees, unions take a portion of those dues and send it to activist NGOs [nongovernmental organizations],” O’Neil said at a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight hearing titled “How Leftist Nonprofit Networks Exploit Federal Tax Dollars to Advance a Radical Agenda.”
O’Neil, the author of “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” talked about some of the unions aligned with government employees, such as the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Government Employees, which is part of the AFL-CIO.
He noted the SEIU contributed $1.6 million to the liberal New Venture Fund and $1.8 million to the liberal grantmaker Tides Foundation. Meanwhile, he noted the AFL-CIO gave $410,000 to New Venture and $100,000 to Tides.
“Not only did the SEIU and AFL-CIO send part of members’ dues to support leftist causes, but they also benefit from a process known as ‘official time,’” O’Neil said. “Federal employees can bill the taxpayer for time they spend not doing their jobs but doing work for the union. This creates yet another stream of taxpayer funds supporting unions that then back leftist causes.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development has contributed significantly to George Soros-aligned organizations that are part of the Open Society Foundations, the panelists asserted.
“I want to underline that I believe it is Soros’ right to spend his money supporting his convictions. I may not agree with these ideas, but I would not call for interference with any American’s right to act politically,” Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow with the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the subcommittee. “Likewise, of course, some of the USAID programs did do good. I am glad that Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio says he will keep some programs, if they advance U.S. interests.”
