I don't think Bush has anything to do with this and CA is one of the prime job markets. Of course this does acutally add jobs.......in Arizona and Nevada and maybe Colorado.
"Bustamante and the 'Mother of All Job-Killers'"
Posted by Fernando Oaxaca
Sunday, September 07, 2003
Lost in the noise of the almost unwatched ''debate'' of the gubernatorial wannabes of last week was a pledge by Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante to sign SB2 if it came to him. Senate Bill 2 will force California businesses with as few as 20 employees to buy for their workers new health care insurance that will be mandated by and administered by the state. The employer must pay 80% of the premium cost, the employee, 20%.
Mr. Bustamante, having enjoyed for decades a seemingly bottomless public payroll and free health insurance, obviously must care less that hundreds of thousands of small businesses in California will suffer and languish--and some will die--if SB2 becomes law. Also in SB2: businesses with 200 or more employees must buy insurance not for just an employee but for dependents of the employee!
It seems inconceivable that the California Legislature, only days before adjournment and with a recall election in less than five weeks on Governor Gray Davis, mostly for fiscal mismanagement, would now engage in passing a massive tax/levy aimed at small businesses!
But this is the same gang that allowed an eager Gray Davis to sign on Friday a law that allows aliens, illegally in the country, to get the ultimate ID card in California, a DMV legitimately issued California driver¹s license. They only need the flimsiest ''proof of residence'' and personal identity. There is no fingerprinting, no background check, no revealing of their country of origin. They could be mass murderers from South America, dope dealers from Colombia, or disguised members of Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, or Libyan terrorist cells. It's all OK! Just show the always vigilant and competent DMV clerk a birth certificate and IRS Tax number or Yugoslavian photo Social Security Card. or whatever! Incredible!
But back to SB2. Not wanting to be second to anyone, these distinguished elected officials, with the Latino Caucus sharing in the lead, have put aside responsibility and common sense for yet one more act of ''compassion'' for legal and illegal alien workers and the poor without health insurance.
Their new law even includes prescription drug coverage, something even the federal government is still struggling with, cost being a major deterrent! But for the unions, the immigrant-rights folks, and Gray Davis policy-clone Cruz Bustamante, no es problema!
Other fathers of this ''rape of small business'' are Senator John Burton, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and Assemblyman Dario Frommer, of Los Angeles, the ambitious aspirant to be chairman of the Legislature Latino Caucus. Frommer has also sponsored and gotten Assembly approval of AB1527, a job-killing soul-mate of SB2. As one sees this push by Senator Burton and his SB2 co-conspirator Senator Jackie Spier, one has to assume that their haste is because Davis is moribund and Burton is termed out. And they don¹t believe Cruz will win!
If you own a small furniture-making business with 18 employees and the business begins to grow and you need to hire 3-5 more guys, will you do so and now assume a $1,500 to $2, 000 each in insurance premiums or $40,000 annually in reduced profit, to make Bustamante or Davis more popular with ''immigrant rights'' folks like the SEIU? Nope; you¹re not stupid. You will forego growth and not hire more people. Or, you might reduce working hours for some, so as to fall below SB2 requirement for 100 hours a month and hope a Bustamante people's-cop doesn¹t catch you.
Let us assume you have a business with 23-25 employees. You face the same state-mandated insurance cost. Do you swallow your margarita and tell your 25 loyal people that you are about to give them free insurance premiums? Nope, you¹re not stupid. You fire 5-6 people and replace their hours and perhaps those of others with half-time employees at 20 hours per week‹because that way they are not ''eligible'' for the employer financed largesse! Or you go under. Businesses that size are very grateful to make a $50,000 annual profit, the cost of the new insurance cost!
Where will the illegal people go? Back to the non-taxpaying underground ''cash'' economy. What did you say? Illegals are not on payrolls tracked by the Employment Development Department (EDD)? Could you not know that ''papers'' are for sale on Lankersheim Boulevard in North Hollywood or Cesar Chavez Boulevard in downtown LA for $60 to $100 bucks a pop? Don¹t you know that if your prospective ''legal'' employee shows you a green card, you cannot by law question its authenticity, so you then fill out an INS Form I-9 which you file to help you (and him) survive the next ''migra'' raid?
But let us go on with SB2, mother of job-killers. The geniuses in Sacramento that analyzed the bills for Burton, Frommer, Ms. Spier state in the language of the bill that the ''financial impact'' is ''none''! They must mean ''impact'' on state budgets since the cost of this new California ''entitlement'' for poor and/or low-pay illegal people is presumed by them to be dumped on the private and non-profit employers in the state who deviate from SB2 in the insurance benefits they provide. But guess what: the new cost is tax-deductible. That means reduced revenue for the state and federal government because of less ''profitable'' companies paying less income tax. Non-profits can add these costs to their state-funded reimbursable ''general and administrative cost'' total if they have state contracts. If not, they hit their donors for more contributions or those with 200 or more employees fire a few dozen or a few hundred people‹or close their doors.
One final blow. If you have single employees making less than $17,800 (200% of ''poverty''), they only have to come up with 5% of the premium cost. If the employee has a family of four, he or she must pay only 5% of the premium unless making more than $36,800 (200% of poverty)!
Reading the ''laws'' did not reveal who makes up the 15% of premium not paid by those making less than 200% of the poverty level. Want to guess who ''gets it'' in what comes out of the Assembly/Senate confab on the bill, before they send it on to Davis or his successor to sign? The Sacramento savants also never explain what to do about the employee who says, ''I won¹t pay the 20%, I can¹t afford it'' or ''I would rather buy a couple of cases of Budweiser with the money. I¹m young and healthy, bro!''
There is a real problem in California with millions of low-income people (and children), most working, not having health insurance. Their health care needs are now met, inadequately, especially in the preventive arena, by local public facilities, Medi-Cal, Healthy Families programs, etc.
But do the little employers in California have to be the patsies for solving this problem? Does anyone care that they cannot continue to pick up the check for every little do-good scheme our liberal Democrat Sacramento spendthrifts invent? They have blown the tax money in the California state vaults. Now, realizing at last that this is no longer tolerated by the electorate, they have found a new bonanza--the small business. Is this right or intelligent?
I don¹t think so and neither do dozens of Latino Chambers of Commerce and mainstream chambers and other representatives of small business across the formerly ''Golden'' state. Who are the chief pushers of this job-killing, economic-growth quagmire called SB2 (AB 1527) beyond the usual legislative suspects? They include every immigrant ''rights'' group in the free world, every major union in California, especially the SEIU, the AFL-CIO biggies, the teacher unions, and other groupings dependent on tax money for their paycheck. Go to the Internet and read the text of the bill; it will give you a heartburn that the Purple Pill cannot handle!
These folks, along with Gray Davis or his hapless policy-clone Bustamante, have decreed capital punishment on the golden goose of California, the small and medium-sized employer that has so far survived paid family leave, transsexual job protection, outrageous power prices, local and state tax and fee increases, and forcibly eating tons of other job-killing crud falling, like hamburger meat, from the Sacramento employer meat-grinder.
If SB2 is signed, buy Southwest Airlines stock. Their airplanes and Amtrak and an endless convoy of Toyota pick-up trucks and Ford 150¹s and GMC's will be full of formerly solvent California male and female, Black, Asian, non-Hispanic ''white,'' Latino (legal and illegal, naturalized, native born) business owners--all fleeing to Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, etc. or on the way to file in bankruptcy court!
Fernando Oaxaca receives e-mail at: lamextex@ix,netcom.com |
