Obamacare: Bribes, Bribes, And More Bribes...
If you thought the deal Obama cut to buy Sen. Ben Nelson's
60th vote was outrageous, you ain't seen nothing yet.
Check out the behind closed doors, backroom deal he just gave "Big Labor."
Say hello to Obamacares "MIDDLE CLASS TAX, TIME BOMB"
nypost.com
Unions will dodge O's health tax
By CARL CAMPANILE
January 15, 2010
Big Labor got some big love from President Obama and congressional Democrats yesterday after they agreed to exempt union workers from the whopping “Cadillac tax” on high-cost health-care plans until 2018.
The sweetheart deal, hammered out behind closed doors, will save union employees at least $60 billion over the years involved, while others won't be as lucky -- they'll have to cough up almost $90 billion.
The 40 percent excise tax on what have come to be called "Cadillac" health-care plans would exempt collective-bargaining contracts covering government employees and other union members until Jan. 1, 2018.
In another major concession to labor, the value of dental and vision plans would be exempt from the tax even after the deal expires in eight years, negotiators said.
Under the plan to help fund health-care reform, the tax would kick in for plans valued at $8,900 or more for individuals and $24,000 or more for families.
That's slightly higher than the $8,500 and $23,000 thresholds in the bill passed by the Senate last month.
The threshold will be even higher for certain plans with many older workers and women -- a move to benefit unions with a high proportion of female membership, sources said.
New York labor leaders -- who had initially campaigned against the Cadillac tax, favoring instead a surcharge on the wealthy -- said they are thrilled.
"We can live with it. We have an agreement that nothing will be taxed until 2018," crowed George Boncoraglio, regional president of the Civil Service Employees Association.
Officials said the deal was thrashed out over more than 15 hours of negotiating at the White House that ended after midnight Wednesday.
Powerful unions were well-represented around the bargaining table.
Participants included AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Andy Stern, head of Service Employees International Union; Anna Burger, head of Change to Win; and the leaders of unions representing teachers, government workers, food and commercial workers, and electricians.
Stern has been among the most frequent visitors to the White House over the last year, showing up more than 20 times, according to logs.
Originally, the Cadillac tax included in the Senate bill was estimated to raise $149 billion through 2019.
But Trumka said the exemption would reduce that amount by $60 billion -- money that negotiators will now have to find elsewhere, or reduce the coverage in the legislation.
Boncoraglio said CSEA leaders were meeting in Albany -- preparing to wage a major offensive against the tax -- when their Washington lobbyist called and briefed them on the changes.
Obama backs the Cadillac excise tax, citing economists who say it would drive down costs by encouraging insurance companies to offer employers and workers a chance to buy lower-cost health plans to avoid the levy.
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The Middle-class tax time bomb
Last Updated: 10:55 AM, January 15, 2010
Posted: 1:18 AM, January 15, 2010
It took two days of wrangling behind closed White House doors under the demanding gaze of big-labor bosses, but President Obama won a major health-care victory yesterday.
The same can't be said of America.
The deal in a nutshell: a big, fat wet kiss for labor unions, which won exemption from a proposed 40 percent tax on on expansive private health-insurance plans until 2018.
Meanwhile, those with generous plans that are not the product of collective-bargaining agreements get to pay beginning immediately.
And to pay and pay and pay.
The tax (along with deep cuts in Medicare funding) was meant to be the chief funding mechanism for Obama's plan.
But now that unions have been effectively exempted, the cash will have to come from elsewhere: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's proposed "millionaire's tax" on high earners, perhaps; there's even talk of slapping a Medicare tax on investment income.
C-SPAN was barred from the Senate-House-White House negotiations -- but labor fat-cats like AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union head Andy Stern and various teacher and government-employee representatives were on hand to make sure the pols toed the line.
And toe it they did.
It's now pretty clear the Democrats will say anything, do anything and spend anything to shove some health-care deal -- any deal -- through.
The union carve-out is perhaps the most egregious example of special-interest pandering, but doubtless other side deals are being cut as well.
And none of them, you can bet, will help restore any of the hundreds of millions of dollars set to be stripped from federal health-care aid to New York.
The irony, of course, is that anything resembling equitable health-care reform was gutted a long time ago, in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's desperate attempt to collect votes.
What's left is a bill that barely pleases 60 senators, maybe 218 friends in the House and a few Big Labor fixers -- while Obama's job-performance polls drop like a rock amongst hard-working Americans doing their best to make ends meet.
Talk about a terrible deal.
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"We have former members of Congress in jail and a lobbyist in jail for this sort of behavior," said David Williams, who has been tracking pork-barrel spending for 15 years for Citizens Against Government Waste. "People are really fed up with it."
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"Another Communist Manifesto Moment"
Oba-mao just couldn't resist another "Communist Manifesto" moment, and an opportunity to continue to destroy the nuclear family by inserting a marriage penalty, a BIG $$$ MARRIAGE PENALTY.
washingtontimes.com
So much is so wrong with Capitol Hill's two versions of government health care that it's hard to focus on yet another poison pill in the bills. Hard, but important. It turns out that in addition to unconstitutional measures, unfair individual mandates, higher taxes, penalties for lifesaving medical devices and a potentially devastating rationing of care, Obamacare also contains several penalties on couples for getting married. Those penalties make government the enemy of both good romance and good finance.
The first sort of marriage penalties affects low- and middle-income couples who would get their insurance without employer assistance but with government subsidies. The penalties accrue through the "caps" on premiums. In the House plan, an unmarried couple living together with each earning $25,000 would pay no more than $3,076 in combined premiums each year. If the same couple got married, their annual cap would skyrocket to $5,160 - a 68 percent punishment just for saying "I do." (The penalty in the Senate bill is slightly lower, at 48 percent.)
A Near $10,000 Penalty For A Married Couple Earning $32k Each
What is even worse is that the subsidies are suddenly and completely cut off once somebody reaches 400 percent of the official poverty-level income ($63,360 in 2016). The arithmetic is complicated, but what it means is that two unmarried persons earning $32,000 each ($64,000 total) would pay a maximum combined $5,684 in premiums, but if they got married, they would pay about $15,000.
That is an astonishing penalty of 164 percent.
It is almost impossible to imagine a policy that could be any more anti-family than that.
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Are you connecting the dots yet people?
This is 100% un-cut, pure Marxism:
"To change society, first you must completely destroy society."
I'd say Oba-mao is well on his way.
SOTB
PS: Even Hollywood is turning on Oba-mao...
newsbusters.org
PPS: It might be a good time to pick up the phone and give your
Senators & Congressmen an ear full. |
