The unions and Obama administration have been running the full-court press to gin up enough pressure on Congress to act on the bill. Despite the speeches, advertising campaigns and photo ops, they can’t even get enough Democrats in the Senate to kick it out of that chamber.

Joe Biden has been carrying the water for the administration. In a recent conference call with union leaders, he claimed students in a Baltimore school are “dodging falling ceiling tiles” during their school day.

More recently, AFT President Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten visited a Yonkers school and decried the conditions those students are in. A photo published by the union shows students sitting in a basement with paint peeling off the walls and a large air conditioning system looms directly over head.

“We can hear the rats when they run” through the ventilation system, the union quoted a student as saying.

Across the country, unionists infer that the money for public education has simply vanished. It’s absurd. The reality is America is continuing to spend more per student on education than at any other time in history. So where is it all going? Are the rats carrying bags of money away?

Of course not. What we’re witnessing is the cost of government education going up, largely due to union labor contracts. In addition to a negotiated raise, most employees also get a “step raise” – which means their pay goes up regardless of their effectiveness. Additionally, the cost of employee retirement and health care benefits are continuing to escalate, and many employees pay nothing toward those costs.

Simply put, revenue is not keeping pace with the expenses. So instead of dealing with the expenses – ie.their benefits and perks – the unions want to increase government revenues, even though thousands of taxpayers are suffering from the recession.

But I ask the question again: Where are all the billions and billions of dollars currently going? Would Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten ever bother to address that, or would that distract from her narrative that teachers are being laid off and therefore the mean-spirited taxpayers must obviously hate teachers?

We’re only now hearing about the squalid, unacceptable conditions our government is putting students in? Is it any wonder traditional public school students don’t perform as well as charter school students? And charter schools, by the way, typically receive 75% to 85% of what their traditional public school counterparts receive in taxpayer dollars. Furthermore, they don’t get a dime from taxpayers for facilities. Charter schools have to find those dollars another way.

Yet they find a way to make it work.

As the unions and Obama administration continue to try to make the case for the Jobs Bill, they’re revealing the soft underbelly of government ineptness in the process.

It makes you wonder, “if this is how they’re spending our dollars, why should we give them more?”

In a recording obtained exclusively by PublicSchoolSpending.com, Biden explained the administration is seeking to spend $30 billion to create a “Teacher Layoff Prevention Fund.”  He also said that many schools today are “deciding whether or not to heat the school or keep a teacher.”

Like school stimuli-past, Biden said schools would not be able to bank the money, but would be required to spend it.  “It’s to be able to keep you at work and even rehire teachers,” he told the unions.  So the Obama administration – yet again – is setting up a situation where the problem will be the same next year and the administration will have to propose another bailout or the school sky will fall in and even more kids will graduate unable to read.

Obama’s proposal includes $10 billion for the 100 “largest, high need public school districts” to use for renovations.  So just prior to the election, the administration is proposing to spend $100 million in communities that traditionally vote for Democrats.  Coincidence?

It’s vitally necessary and these jobs (no really, these jobs) truly are “shovel-ready,” Biden contends.  In some schools, students “must often dodge falling ceiling tiles and scattering roaches and bathrooms that are missing.”  Not just missing doors, but completely gone!

In others, “raw waste spews into the halls after the sewage line burst, 29 kids squeezing into rooms built for 20, etc.” Biden said.

But there is resistance and skewed priorities, according to Biden.  (You wouldn’t think a call with the Obama administration and the teachers’ unions wouldn’t be complete without a little class warfare rhetoric, would you?)

“The corporations are fat with money out there” and the reason they aren’t spending it to create jobs is because “they don’t think there are going to be customers to be there to buy because they don’t have jobs or they have stagnant incomes…”

Naturally, it’s the businesses’ fault.  The reality is business owners are unsure of the tax, regulatory and ObamaCare liability environment, so they’re sitting tight.  Businesses are cautious when there is instability, which the Obama administration has created.

Nevertheless, Biden, like the typical liberal, sets up false choices.  “As the president’s said, you know, we have to have priorities.  It’s not that we are against people getting tax breaks who are wealthy, I mean, it’s just about being fair.”

“Thirty billion dollars to hire back or keep a total of 280,000 teachers employed.  We can either do that, or we can continue to give a $37 billion tax break…to the oil companies, who are doing incredibly well, don’t need our help, said they didn’t, but our Republican colleagues and a few Democrats have said they’re going to continue that tax break – that loophole – for gas and oil.  It’s not needed.

“We can spend $37 billion continuing this loophole or $30 billion for 280,000 teachers in the classroom.”

The others on the leftist list of boogeymen didn’t escape unscathed.

“We can modernize our 35,000 schools or we can keep letting hedge fund managers – and they’re not bad guys – but hedge fund managers pay at 15 percent tax.  You guys pay at 28 percent or higher.  And it’s a $20 billion a year tax break allowing them to avoid ordinary income taxes. … It’s just not fair.

“What do you want to do?  Keep that tax loophole that costs $20 billion a year or modernize 35,000 public schools and put people to work?”

Oil companies? Check.  Hedge fund managers?  Check.  Who’s left?  Oh yeah, corporate jet owners.

“We can either keep cops and firefighters on the job, which we do in this bill – there’s a total of $5 billion for them combined – or you can give corporate jet owners a special tax break. … That costs $3 billion, that one tax loophole, for corporate jet owners.  They’re not bad guys, I don’t care if they have jets, but why in God’s name are we going to spend $3 billion to give them that tax break…?”

Another apparent injustice is the paltry fee for corporate jets to file a flight plan, according to Biden.  It’s supposedly much cheaper than for a commercial airline to do the same.  Biden contends $12 billion can be raised by increasing the fee to $100.

NEA president Dennis Van Roekel fawned all over Biden.  “The NEA, we are proud to stand with this administration.  We recognize the unwavering commitment you have made to working families and students,” said in response.

AFT president Ranid Weigarten assured Biden the unions would be there for the Obama administration.  “…The president has put together a very granular, very concrete bill…to actually put people back to work.”

“Now it’s for us to try to get this done.  Create the pressure we know educators can do to say, look – we can’t, you know – there’s an election in 14 months from now but this is an opportunity to get this done, paid for with shared sacrifice – shared responsibility – of those who happen to be more fortunate than most people on this call and this is that opportunity.

“And speaking for the AFT, Mr. Vice President, then I’ll stop, we will do whatever we can to help create the…advocacy to do this.”

So on behalf of the administration, the NEA and AFT will begin the work of selling yet another bailout for government-run schools.  A bailout, of course, which would produce $35.4 million in dues for the NEA and $13.1 million for the AFT.

Whoa.  Are public sector unions planning a similar “regime change” here in America?

If not, why would Weingarten be cavorting in the Middle East at a time when American public schools are seeing massive dropout rates, budget reductions and reforms that strike at the base of union power?

Details are scant regarding Weingarten’s trip or agenda.  The union didn’t identify her traveling companions, the Egyptian unions they met with, or what action plan may have been devised.

Meanwhile, Weingarten hailed the launch of a global “Quality Public Services Campaign.”

It would be wise for the union to focus on “quality public services” at home because in far too many communities in America, they stink.  And Weingarten’s union bears much of the blame for the lack of quality, at least in public school classrooms.

As for her travels in Egypt, it would be interesting to know exactly what she has up her sleeve. Why does she want to learn more about the successful overthrow of the former Egyptian government? Is she targeting the Obama regime, or taxpayers who in Weingarten’s view are not coughing up enough for public education and school employees?

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey was even floating a bill that would make the federal government the backstop for pension funds – essentially committing to a bailout if the funds ran dry.

But the brain trust at the AFL-CIO and American Federation of Teachers have come up with a new idea: let’s use the billions of pension dollars set aside for union retirees to fund real estate development.

In other words, they want to use massive sums of money sitting in a (albeit evil) bank somewhere to put union members back to work on construction projects. This from people who said former President George W. Bush was crazy for proposing the investment of Social Security funds into the stock market.

Has Rich Trumka or Randi Weingarten looked at the real estate market lately?  It’s kind of not good.

From the New York Times:

“Richard L. Trumka, president of the labor federation, will present the plan at a meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Chicago as part of organized labor’s effort to get the federal government, banks and money managers to do more to issue bonds or create other mechanisms to finance infrastructure projects.

“A.F.L.-C.I.O. officials said they planned to work with Deutsche Bank and other financial institutions in the hope of coming up with hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit large commercial buildings. Many building owners are hesitating to do such retrofits because they are highly leveraged and do not have the cash to make the investments. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. hopes its $10 billion will provide an incentive for banks and hedge funds to develop financing vehicles to make such projects happen.”

What happens if the real estate investments go south?  Who pays to make sure Mrs. Jones and Mr. Anderson collect their full pensions on schedule?  Trumka and Weingarten?  Their members?  Of course not.  These folks have a long history of seeking bailouts from Congress when something goes wrong.

Pension funds should not be treated like union piggy banks, unless the unions want to accept the responsibility of replacing the money if the investments turn sour.  Taxpayers should not be left holding the bag for a foolish self-serving union financial strategy.

Studies have shown that students in classes with TFA teachers did demonstrably better on math tests than students in non-TFA classrooms.  Many TFA teachers continue beyond their two year commitment.

TFA teachers, by their very nature, are go-getters. Most were excellent university students who could have gone straight into high-paying careers, but chose to spend some of their early years working with American youth. They do what it takes to get the job done.  They’ll stay beyond the final bell.  They essentially toss the collective bargaining agreement out the window.  It’s that type of drive that gives heartburn to union organizers who want the school to operate according to the contract.

Washington Post columnist George Will called Teach For America “a template for transformation.”

Randi Weingarten recently praised TFA in Education Week, saying:

Teach for America has attracted thousands of highly educated, idealistic young people to undertake one of the toughest jobs out there in some of the most challenging environments.…

Educators are all in this together.  One group should not be pitted against another, when our focus must be on the devastating cuts that threaten great harm to a generation of children.

So consider this skunk at the garden party. Leo Casey, vice president the New York City United Federation of Teachers, seems to believe that TFA is somehow bad because too many of the teachers are white. The film clip of his comments comes from EAGtv:

The teaching force in New York City has become steadily whiter under [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg and [former schools Chancellor Joel] Klein and it is connected I think in significant measure to the use of groups like Teach for America which are significantly whiter than the teaching force.

Yes, at the socialist-organized Left Forum, Casey tossed the race card on the table, accusing Teach For America of “whitening” New York City public schools.

Teach For America told EAGtv that its members comprise less than 1% of the teaching force in New York City and about 60% TFA members are white.  Those facts are merely a distraction to Casey in his racial smear campaign.

My child’s teacher could be purple and look like Barney the Dinosaur – if he or she is an effective teacher and  can help my son excel, so be it.  Why are leftists always so focused on race?

Does Randi Weingarten, whose organization oversees UFT, stand by Casey’ sickening comments or repudiate them?  As in the case of the California Federation of Teachers resolution honoring cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, she has remained silent.

It would behoove the unions to work in the best interest of children and make sure the best teacher possible is in front of every child in America, regardless of their skin color.

Teach For America is having a positive impact on some of America’s worst schools, and gutter attacks by the likes of Leo Casey and the United Federation of Teachers should not be tolerated.