In the last few weeks, conservatives have amplified their criticism of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill that passed the House but stalled in the Senate in 2007, and that may be revived in the next Congress. The EFCA would offer “a fairer path for workers to unionize” by enabling them to form a union by signing cards of consent, instead of having to undergo a full unionization campaign and vote.

One of the conservatives bashing the EFCA recently was Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who said that the legislation promotes “something called card-check … which would take away the right to a secret ballot in a union election.” He added that “unions would be able to browbeat workers into signing the cards.”

On MSNBC today, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said he “can’t think of a more insidious bill.” Watch it:

Coleman and Hatch join former Congressman Bob Schaffer (R-CO), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Jim Demint (R-SC), and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), along with George Will and the National Review, in berating the bill.

These conservatives, however, are all missing the point. First, the EFCA “would not eliminate traditional elections.” Majority sign-ups, meanwhile, are “usually fairer than secret-ballot elections,” as the current method “allows companies to pressure workers through a formal campaign.”

The advocacy organization American Rights at Work found that employers interfere with almost 50 percent of union elections, and workers who ask for a vote never receive one 40 percent of the time.

The importance of unions to the American worker can not really be understated. The AFL-CIO notes that “60 million U.S. workers would join a union if they could.” Union workers on average make 30 percent in more in wages than non-union workers, and are more likely to have health insurance.

This is important because, in recent years, wages have stagnated. Wages were actually 0.3% lower in June 2008 than they were in March 2001. Meanwhile, in 2007 top business executives earned “344 times the salary of the average American worker.” Between 1980 and 2005, as unionization rates plummeted, CEO pay rose.

As the Institute for Policy Studies wrote, the Employee Free Choice Act is “legislation that would help workers realize their right to organize into unions and bargain collectively with their employers.” If this is the most insidious bill that Hatch has seen, he really hasn’t seen anything insidious at all.

John McCain has been attacking Barack Obama as a “tax-and-spend liberal” for his plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 in order to pay for middle class tax cuts and investments in alternative energy, health care, and education.

McCain, for his part, has proposed doubling the Bush tax cuts by adding an additional $300 billion in budget busting tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Both these approaches have been tried, and only one created real job growth and widespread prosperity.

Under President Bush, whose economic agenda consisted almost entirely of massive tax cuts heavily skewed to the wealthy, job growth was sluggish, creating only 4.8 million jobs over the course of his entire presidency.

By contrast, in the first months of his administration, President Clinton proposed a budget that raised income tax rates slightly on the very rich and “new ‘investment’ spending for education, job training, social services, health, science and technology and community and regional development.” The resulting budget lay the groundwork for a balanced budget and stunning economic growth that created 23 million jobs over the course of his presidency.

At the time, the Washington Post reported that conservatives “blasted [the Clinton plan] as more of their old ‘tax and spend’ policies.”