President Obama is paying off  the “public safety” unions by supporting legislation intended to allow them to completely suck the taxpayer dry.

Get ready for Organized Labor’s biggest congressional handout yet.

It would come via a piece of legislation called the “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act.” Attached, ridiculously enough, to a spending bill that provides war funding for the troops, it will soon hit the House floor for a vote.

From the name, you’d think that the act improved public safety. Wrong. In fact, it overrides state laws to boost union membership – at taxpayer expense.

The act would require all states to allow police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel to collectively bargain with taxpayers. If they don’t create their own system, the federal government will impose one on them.

Unions once fought for higher wages. Now they fight for higher taxes.

New Jersey. Illinois. California. All across America public-sector unions campaign for tax increases. In Oregon they recently outspent businesses 3-to-2 to pass two ballot initiatives raising income and business taxes.

High taxes make perfect sense for government-employee unions – taxes fund the generous benefits of government workers. State employees in Oregon contribute nothing out-of-pocket toward their health care expenses. Many government employees can retire with a full pension at 55.

But these expensive benefits and the high taxes that fund them have wreaked havoc on state economies. The budget crises in California, Illinois and New Jersey didn’t happen by chance. Well over half of government employees in those states hold union cards.

This is, of course, the federal version of the corruption that occurs at the state level where legislators vote unionized employees enormous pay and benefits and receive financial contributions from the unions in return. The unions believe that state constitutions will require that all necessary taxes be levied to pay for their pensions and benefits regardless of the negative fiscal impact on taxpayers and reductions in state services. But is this belief correct? Obviously it depends on the state and the specific language, but in Illinois for example:

Illinois public employees who think the state constitution guarantees that they’ll get all their pension benefits may have another think coming.

Politicians’ and public labor unions’ assurances aside, there’s another, not-well-publicized school of thought that says if the pension funds go bust, the state has no obligation to step in to pay the benefits. This runs contrary to the popular view that the Illinois Constitution, on its face, guarantees that all public employee pension benefits will be fully paid.

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So, does any law creating the pension funds “specifically provide” that the state would become the guarantor? Sidley examined the laws creating the five state pension funds and concluded that while each contains an “obligation of state” provision, none guarantees that the state will step in and pay the funds if they run out of money.

In simple language, that means if the pension funds run short of cash, public workers face the same sort of uncertainties that most workers in the private sector do.

Or in New Jersey:

The state’s most recent report said that as of June 2009, the pension funds should have had assets of $112 billion to meet their future obligations, but had only $66 billion — one of the largest shortfalls, known as unfunded liability, in the country. The situation is probably worse today: The state is supposed to contribute about $3 billion a year to the funds, but amid huge budget deficits and spending cuts, it is in the second consecutive year of contributing nothing.

As an acquaintance who is a bankruptcy lawyer likes to say  “You can’t get blood out of a turnip.”