A War On Reality
Politics: Rep. Henry Waxman vowed to haul CEOs into hearings after they revealed just how much ObamaCare will cost their firms. It's an absurd war on bookkeeping, from a Congress desperate to avoid heat for this fiasco.
In the wake of President Obama's presidential signature on the gargantuan Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act last Thursday, big companies have crunched their numbers and come up with an ugly picture.
In legally mandated filings, AT&T reported that ObamaCare will cost it $1 billion. Deere & Co. reported $150 million in new costs. Caterpillar must cough up $100 million. 3M must pay another $90 million. AK Steel gets to fork over $31 million. Valero Energy will pay $30 million. There'll be more as other companies report anticipated costs to fulfill their requirements to inform shareholders. What it shows is a huge wave of costs rolling over the private sector to pay for this bill.
It's the real cost of ObamaCare, a bill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had touted daily as "paid for" in her pitch for Congressional votes.
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it's paid for because everything is paid for. The question is by whom.
The coming costs are the result of a little-scrutinized ObamaCare provision ending a tax credit for prescription drugs. The credit had been there to encourage firms to carry those costs for retirees.
As a result of ObamaCare's changes, companies now can either pay for those costs — and lay off workers, hold off expansion or move abroad — or scrap their prescription drug programs altogether, dumping their retirees onto the federal government.
Either way, the costs are "paid for" — but they've also just skyrocketed, thanks to ObamaCare.
Instead of admitting the economic reality voters and companies have been warning Congress about, and maybe offering to read the bill next time, Waxman seeks to blame the very businesses the Democrats have just victimized.
It's a sorry spectacle because Congress paid no attention at all to anyone who raised a yellow flag about how badly the cost-shifting would hit the private sector.
The Chamber of Commerce's assessments of the impact on companies were dismissed in favor of MoveOn.org's hysterical "analysis" howling for socialized health care. And the bill passed.
Now it's time to pay the piper, and Waxman doesn't want to pay.
He has decided to haul the executives into yet another round of star chamber hearings to explain just why two and two make four.
This is an implied threat to companies either to cook their books or face legal or political sanctions for embarrassing Congress by revealing the true impact of its health care bill on the private sector.
It has its place with what Stalin did in Soviet Russia, denouncing farmers as hoarders after setting artificially low prices for crops, and what Hugo Chavez is doing today in Venezuela, dictating prices on raw goods and limiting access to money while penalizing companies for passing on those costs to customers.
If Waxman gets away with this, it will be just as corrosive on the private sector here. It's only happening because companies operating in market conditions dared to embarrass Congress with reality. |
