Unfortunately, Washington is doing more harm than good by creating a cloud of uncertainty that is hurting job creators and the workers they hope to hire. Tax hikes, record deficit spending, and increasing government control over the economy are forcing small businesses and entrepreneurs to the sidelines of economic activity. In particular, a proposal simmering in Congress, known as “card check,” would replace a secret ballot election with a public sign-up process for workers deciding whether to join a union. As a result, the bill would drive up costs on business, increase workplace conflict, and lead to fewer jobs.

The threat of this proposal is very real. Just yesterday, President Obama promised labor bosses he would remain in the fight to pass card check. Although the proposal has been unable to garner enough support to become law, there are persistent rumors that Democrats plan to convene an end-of-year “lame duck” session in which they could muscle through unpopular measures like card check before the 112th Congress is gaveled into session in January 2011.

It is no secret Big Labor invested heavily to produce a Democrat-controlled Washington. Nor is anyone surprised to learn they’re planning a repeat performance this fall, with two unions alone announcing plans to spend nearly $100 million to help Democrats hold their seats in Congress. And what do they expect from the Democrats they are helping to elect? At the top of their agenda is card check, which has been cleverly – indeed, deceptively – named the Employee Free Choice Act.

Secret ballots are a fundamental principle of American democracy. They remove intimidation and coercion from the voting booth and allow men and women to vote their conscience freely. Despite the bill’s lofty name, removing the secret ballot from union elections will give workers anything but freedom. If a secret ballot is good enough for electing Presidents and Members of Congress, it is should be good enough for workers trying to make ends meet and provide for their families.

While leaders of Big Labor claim this proposal is necessary to economic recovery, the facts suggest otherwise. One academic study estimated this proposal would cost our economy 1.5 million jobs in the first year if the unionization rate increased by just three percentage points as a result of card check’s public sign-up and forced government contracts. We have lost more than seven million jobs since the recession began. Card check would wipe out the job gains we have seen in recent months and the hopes of many unemployed Americans looking for work.

Card check is part of a disturbing culture of union favoritism that puts the whims of union bosses ahead of the best interests of rank-and-file workers. Already the Obama administration has weakened commonsense rules that would have helped shed light on how unions spend members’ dues. At the same time, the administration has called for Project Labor Agreements to be used on large federal construction projects, giving unionized firms a major advantage while driving up costs for taxpayers. These job-killing policies make American businesses less competitive and less able to expand and hire new workers.

Although Democrats have controlled all the levers of power in Washington since January of last year, Republicans have consistently offered better solutions to the challenges facing our country. One such solution is the Secret Ballot Protection Act. This proposal will ensure no one takes away a worker’s right to a secret ballot, protecting workers against coercion or intimidation at the ballot box and eliminating a union’s ability to force an employer to agree to card-check recognition.

Today, at AmericaSpeakingOut.com, I encourage you to let your voice be heard on this important issue. America Speaking Out is an innovative tool bringing the wisdom and wishes of the American people to their nation’s capital. Over the next several weeks, House Republicans will use every resource available to hear from the American people and use their commonsense ideas to draft a new governing agenda for our country. With your support at America Speaking Out, we can put forward a new agenda that protects workers and provides employers the certainty they need to create jobs.

When the Department of Labor releases the unemployment numbers for the month of July, we will learn whether job creators are back in the game or still seeing clouds of uncertainty. With your help we can take card check off the table and give job creators a reason to move forward confidently on behalf of their businesses and American workers.

It turns out activist judges are not the only breed of unelected arbiters attempting to impose their vision of the law from outside the legislative branch. Elsewhere in the federal government lurk various boards and governing bodies that, when commandeered by ideologues, could wreak havoc on the law and long-standing policy.

Consider the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency created by Congress to administer the law that governs relations between unions and employers. The NLRB’s website describes the five-member governing board as a quasi-judicial body that decides labor issues. In other words, the Board is intended to act as an impartial arbiter of labor law, resolving disputes within the confines of the laws passed by Congress.

Enter Craig Becker. A former associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union, Becker’s paper trail includes a series of writings outlining his views that employers should have virtually no rights in their own workplaces, and his belief that the Board can be used as a tool to undo decades of workplace election policy.

Becker has been unambiguous about his belief that the rights of employers should be drastically limited under labor relations law, arguing in a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article that, “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.” He is a supporter of the anti-worker “card check” method of union organizing, which strips workers of the right to privacy at the ballot box, and he has written that changes to certain organizing rules “could be achieved with almost no alteration to the statutory framework.”

Not surprisingly, Becker’s radical views came under fire when he was nominated by President Obama to serve on the Board. Senators on both sides of the aisle sounded the alarm about his activist tendencies, expressing concern about whether Becker would adhere to congressional intent and the strict requirements of the law in resolving workplace disputes.

Becker’s nomination met bipartisan opposition in the Senate and fell far short of the votes needed to advance. Unwilling to allow the Senate to further vet the nominee and resolve questions about his fitness for the job, President Obama instead used a recess appointment to install Becker on the Board in late March.

Becker’s nomination was part of a package of appointments to fill three vacancies on the panel. Neither of the other two nominees in the slate – one Republican and one Democrat – provoked the controversy nor the opposition surrounding Becker.

When the President made his recess appointment, the other Democratic nominee, Mark Pearce, joined Becker in bypassing Senate confirmation. Yet inexplicably, the noncontroversial Republican nominee, Brian Hayes, was left in limbo by President Obama.

At the time he made the recess appointments, the president said “I simply cannot allow partisan politics to stand in the way of the basic functioning of government.” Sadly, this lofty rhetoric does not match the reality of forcing two Democrats on the board over Senate objections while leaving behind the single Republican nominee.

Union leaders have made their intentions for the Board crystal clear. They view a friendly Board as their back door path to changing workplace organizing law. And the friendlier the Board, the better.

In her faltering bid to replace Andy Stern at the helm of the SEIU, current Secretary-Treasurer Anna Burger described her plan to “push the labor-friendly majority on the NLRB to level the playing field and make it easier to organize through regulation.”

“It we aren’t able to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, we will work with President Obama and Vice President Biden and their appointees to the National Labor Relations Board to change the rules governing forming a union through administrative action…” wrote Stewart Acuff of the Utility Workers Union of America in a piece published by the Huffington Post.

The special interests have set their sights on this obscure labor relations governing board as their tool for growing their ranks, coming down hard on job creators, and enacting policies unable to garner support in Congress. It’s easy to get caught up in the debate about judicial appointees who might reshape our laws from the bench, but we must not ignore the threat posed by other unelected activists.

Congressman John Kline represents Minnesota’s second congressional district and is the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee. For more information about the work of Republicans at the Education and Labor Committee, please visit their website, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

Establishment of a federal monopoly over the most widely used type of college financial assistance is certainly cause for concern. However, for all the attention paid to the loan programs, the creeping federal expansion into other elements of our education system has virtually been ignored.

For example, perhaps you haven’t heard that the legislation creates a new $8 billion “early childhood” program that imposes federal standards on state pre-K programs. Or that it directs more than $6 billion to school construction, modernization, and renovation – making the U.S. Secretary of Education the Facilities Manager-in-Chief. The legislation also calls for $7 billion in various new initiatives to support community colleges – much of it duplicative of existing spending on job training and workforce development.

Also of concern, tucked away in this flood of federal spending is a rather innocuous sounding item called “Open Online Education.” The details of this half-a-billion dollar program are contained in a single legislative sentence. “From the amount appropriated to carry out this section, the Secretary is authorized to make competitive grants to, or enter into contracts with, institutions of higher education, philanthropic organizations, and other appropriate entities to develop, evaluate, and disseminate freely-available high-quality online courses, including instructional materials, for training and postsecondary education readiness and success.”

If you blinked, you might have missed it. But with those 53 words, the federal government may have just seized control of our nation’s college curriculum.

The American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Hess followed this federal foray into college curriculum in a piece published earlier this month by Inside Higher Ed :

First off, it’s not clear what problem the administration hopes to solve. Online courses already exist and are offered by an array of publishers and public and private institutions. Access to online courses is hardly an issue. Online enrollment grew from 1.6 million students in 2002 to 3.9 million in 2007, when the figure equaled more than 20 percent of total enrollment at all U.S. degree-granting institutions. U.S. News and World Report reports that nearly 1,000 higher education institutions provide distance learning. For-profit online providers reported that online enrollment was up more than 25 percent from summer 2008 to 2009. …

Today, the chokepoint is often not the lack of existing online courses or materials but the fact that colleges and universities offer them at prices that approximate those charged to students enrolled in more costly traditional instruction. Of course, this stickiness in price has been due to credentialing and regulatory practices that impede the emergence of low-cost entrants; state-funded institutions that use new e-learning students to cross-subsidize other units; and proprietary operators that have happily responded to this cozy arrangement by competing on convenience rather than price. …

The measure also manages to raise concerns about academic freedom and stifling critical research and development.

Federal law has long buttressed academic freedom and intellectual pluralism by prohibiting the U.S. Department of Education from exercising control over “curriculum, program of instruction … text books, or other educational materials by any educational institution.” The administration would suddenly have the department funding the creation and dissemination of entire courses. Once the U.S. Department of Education is sponsoring a freely available course financed with taxpayer funds, it will be difficult for all but the most expensive or distinctive institutions or providers to justify paying for an alternative offering. For the huge swath of the curriculum represented by general and introductory courses, it is not a stretch to imagine that federally-sponsored courses would become a de facto national college curriculum.

Hess rightly points out that federal law prohibits the federal government from controlling curriculum … or exercising any “direction” or “supervision” over it, for that matter. The statute is clear – the federal government cannot, it must not, interfere with or even involve itself with what is taught in our classrooms.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that this Administration and its backers in Congress are quietly assuming control of college classrooms. With an army of czars and an explosion in federal programs, the individuals controlling the levers of power in Washington these days have charted a clear course for an activist federal government. But for those who understand that America’s higher education system is rooted in academic independence and educational freedom, the prospect of a federal curriculum is downright Orwellian.