After watching this quick video of Nancy Pelosi, one has to wonder whether or not Bruce Bartlett still wants to argue that there’s no correlation between business hiring and government regulations.



Although the clip is from a CNBC interview last week, it escaped many of eyes and is just now gaining attention. It deals with the union controversy at Boeing’s South Carolina plant, and features Maria Bartiromo asking Pelosi, “For starters, do you think it‘s right that Boeing has to close down that plant in South Carolina because it’s non-union?”



Pelosi’s response? “Yes.”



She then quickly added: “I don’t know if they could close it down, I would hope that they would make it union.”



When pressed, she got defensive: “You asked me what I thought, and I told you what I thought.”



Basically, if Pelosi really believes what she’s saying, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) should have the authority to shut down private-sector plants simply for not being unionized.



But wouldn‘t that type of outside authority and decision making have a massive and direct influence on a company’s ability to hire?



Ed Morrisey of Hotair writes on the overall implications:





Government should have no interest in whether a particular plant is unionized or not, let alone assert authority in this area.



Government exists to uniformly enforce the law without bias. Agencies like the NLRB want to use the color of authority to favor unions because they see that as a preferred social-engineering outcome — whether or not workers themselves want union representation or not.



And it is also pointed out by Lachlan Markay of the Heritage Foundation that “workers at the South Carolina plant in question voted resoundingly (199-68) to decertify their union two years ago.”



Therefore, government policies that would close a plant for being non-union enforces only government-approved policies (who gets to decide those?), has a direct effect on a company’s ability to hire and operate, and it “would simply be punishing those workers for exercising their right to determine union representation for themselves,” according to Markay.