For labor unions, the Obama era has been bittersweet. Imagine a man slowly dying in the hospital, who nonetheless exerts immense power over government and receives one enormous gift after another from the president of the United States, and you start to get the picture.

President Obama’s latest giveaway to the unions came as part of the Labor Department’s $175 million grant program for “providing more Americans with affordable access to education and job training opportunities to help grow the middle class.” As the Washington Examiner‘s Sean Higgins reported Thursday, union training programs will get $25.5 million of that cash — more than 14 percent, or a share roughly twice as large as union representation in the private sector.