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AFL-CIO: WSJ 'twists union spending data'

The AFL-CIO is pushing back against a Wall Street Journal that has galvanized the right by comparing union spending on politics to that of corporate spending on politics.

"The Wall Street Journal article purports to show that union spending on politics is far greater than known and is as big a factor as excessive corporate money in politics, but in using Department of Labor LM-2 forms, it twists union spending data in key ways," AFL-CIO authors write in a three-page backgrounder, published by my colleague James Hohmann in today's "Morning Score."

The Journal declined to comment, and would not say if or how it intended to respond.

Yesterday's article, by Tom McGinty and Brody Mullins, asserted that unions spend "about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought."

"[U]nions spend far more money on a wider range of political activities, including supporting state and local candidates and deploying what has long been seen as the unions' most potent political weapon: persuading members to vote as unions want them to," McGinty and Mullins write. "The result is that labor could be a stronger counterweight than commonly realized to "super PACs" that today raise millions from wealthy donors, in many cases to support Republican candidates and causes."

In their backgrounder, the AFL-CIO argues that the Journal took too broad an interpretation of union "political" spending and either double- or triple-counted that spending, while at the same time ignoring the true influence of corporate spending.

"The Journal misses the central point that unions are advocacy organizations. The job of a union is to advocate on behalf of working men and women," the AFL-CIO authors write. "They ignore that corporations outspend unions by well more than 10 to 1 but are free to hide their spending while unions disclose everything."

Union efforts may all be for naught, however, as the right continues to trumpet the report from the rooftops. At HotAir this morning, blogger Karl argues that McGinty and Mullins analysis "likely understates Big Labor’s indirect political spending" (italics mine).