President Joe Biden has yet to deliver on many of the promises he made to his Big Labor supporters in 2020, thanks to some moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate. But he keeps trying.

In doing so, Biden signed an executive order last month that is bad news for taxpayers.

The order seeks to give unions first dibs on large federally funded construction projects above $35 million by forcing what’s known as project labor agreements, a term for collective bargaining deals between the contractors and unions.

This timing is obvious. Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill is flooding money into projects around the country to boost transportation and broadband, among other priorities. Biden vowed the spending law would translate into good-paying union jobs, and the executive action is one way to fulfill that pledge.

“The executive order I’m going to sign today is going to help ensure that we build a better America, we build it right, and we build it on time, and we build it cheaper than it would have been otherwise,” Biden said last month at the Ironworkers Local 5 in Maryland.

Pitching the executive order as a cost saver is disingenuous, as collective bargaining inherently drives up costs. It’s the same faulty logic used to defend prevailing wage laws that force union-level pay and benefits on publicly funded construction projects.

Michigan got rid of its prevailing wage law in 2018, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last fall sought to reinstate the measure for state projects through an executive directive.

Like Biden, Whitmer aimed to please her union backers, even though prevailing wage clearly drives up the costs for taxpayer-funded projects.

Claiming that using nonunion workers will lead to shoddy work is also an insult to the nearly 90% of construction employees who aren’t in a union.

Groups representing nonunion construction workers and contractors, along with Republicans in Congress, are pushing back on Biden’s order.

“Project labor agreements will exclude 87.4% of America’s construction workforce from competing for and building infrastructure projects funded by the Department of Transportation, increasing construction costs by 12% to 20% and undermining taxpayer investments in public works projects,” said Ben Brubeck, vice president of regulatory, labor and state affairs for Associated Builders and Contractors, in a statement.

A letter this week signed by 60 House Republicans warns project labor agreements will “deny critical construction jobs to local workers and small businesses,” and urges the White House to avoid attaching strings that will “create discriminatory barriers to recovery.”

Biden would be wise to heed these warnings, and to spare American taxpayers from unnecessary expenses.