These types of cases aren’t limited to the Teamsters. The Labor Department’s enforcement agency has secured 900 indictments and successfully prosecuted more than 850 individuals since 2001. During that time the office has a recouped more than $103 million for American workers.

This wasn’t always the case. The number of employees working for the Office of Labor-Management Standards fell from 392 in 1992 to just 260 in 2002 after years of cuts by the Clinton administration. Fewer employees meant fewer audits -- forcing the office to rely more heavily on unions to police themselves.

Since taking office, Bush has restored many of the positions cut under Clinton to boost auditing and enforcement. As of 2006, there were 384 employees working for the office.

The lean Clinton years could return, however. While other offices at Labor last year reaped budget increases from the Democratic-controlled Congress, the enforcement office saw its budget cut by $3 million.

And that wasn’t all. Congressional leaders and their Big Labor allies also tried to water down financial reporting requirements. A dispute arose last year over the revised LM-30 form that requires union bosses to “disclose possible conflicts between personal interests and the officer’s or employee’s duty to the union and its members.”

The Labor Department revised the rule to give the union rank-and-file more information about how their dues were spent. But union leaders such as John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO denounced the new reporting requirements as a “debilitating burden.”

With promises from Obama to ease union oversight, and endorsements from congressional Democrats for the Employee Free Choice Act (H.R. 800), better known as the card check bill, Big Labor is salivating at the prospect of a return to “one-party government” in Washington next year.