Remember President Clinton's slogan on affirmative action, "Mend it, don't end it"? Well, now we know what the meaning of "mend" is. It means a huge expansion of federal power to enforce hiring quotas on American companies.
As reported last week by Glenn Burkins in the Wall Street Journal, the Clinton Labor Department is planning to require thousands of companies that do business with the federal government to submit the name, race, age, sex, race, and salary of all their employees to Labor Department auditors.
The government audits about 4,000 companies every year to enforce compliance with the affirmative-action programs imposed on federal contractors. Under the new regulations, every audited firm would have to pony up the sensitive detailed data on its employees. Back in the Carter years, when the Labor Department tried to engineer a similar expansion of its enforcement powers, it was thwarted by the Office of Management and Budget. Does anyone -- either at the Clinton OMB or on Capitol Hill -- have the political will to rein in Labor's quota police this time?