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Democrats believe that if they passed a law that said "pigs can fly," the skies would soon be filled with joyous oinking.
And so they're shocked...shocked!...that the Obamacare bill which was supposed to reduce costs for businesses is already causing costs to skyrocket. AT&T reports increased costs of $1 billion, Caterpillar will pay more than $100 million more, Deere & Company $150 million, and the list goes on and on...totaling nearly $14 billion during the most challenging business environment in memory. New jobs? New investments? Not likely.
The Democrats are responding to this bad news by ordering an investigation of the companies, demanding to know why the real-life numbers aren't adding up the way the Democrats ordained them to.
According to one source, prior to Obamacare's passage several CEO's tried to explain to the president what the bill would do to business and the economy in general: "First the president didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."
None of which, unfortunately, kept the president or the Democrats from passing the bill. And the buck.
And it's only going to get worse!
ReplyDeleteThere was a little dry rot on some 2x6 beams that make up part of the foundation of our home. Not every one but enough that the ones that were bad needed immediate attention, cut out and replaced.
ReplyDeleteIn the process I was reminded of both Houses of Congress.
Excellent analogy, Buzz.
ReplyDeleteDEFINATELY time to 'cut out the rot'
Caterpillar sold off it's farm tractor business to Agco, a European company. Cummins Engines are largely manufactured and assembled offshore. Ford Tractors are owned by Fiat, and made in Italy. It will be as easy as the stroke of a pen for the American industrial giants to move to Mexico, who I'm sure would welcome them with open arms.
ReplyDeleteGood article in today's WSJ titled "The Rich Can't Pay for ObamaCare. It outlines how taxes on the super rich tend to reduce tax revenues. There's good historical data to prove that point. "The president intends to squeeze an extra $1.2 trillion over 10 years from a tiny sliver of taxpayers who already pay more than half of all individual taxes. It won't work." So when the projected revenues don't materialize, guess who's going to get the bill and face the inevitable reductions in care.
ReplyDeleteReaders- great comments from everybody! What we're seeing is that reality doesn't bend to legislation.
ReplyDeleteReal numbers will show real losses, and real businesses will adjust (perhaps by leaving the country) rather than passively accepting onerous regulations.
The increased costs are due to the removal of a tax benefit given to companies for providing drug benefits to retirees. This was a bone tossed to them by the 2003(?) Medicare Part D drug stupidity. The idea was that by giving companies an incentive to do this, fewer people would get dumped on Medicare and the cost of the Part D idiocy would be lower. This is yet another reason to eliminate the corporate income tax. Companies do not pay taxes, their customers pay taxes because the corp tax just gets baked into the price of the end user product.
ReplyDeleteHere's a little new flash for all you people that voted for Obama and his socialist medical care bill. If you think for a minute any company that employees over 50 people is going to pay the Obamanites 11% of their salary base to the government for health care, even if it's mandated, you are smoking crack. We will simply write them a check for 11% of our payroll and then pass the cost to the employees through their increased portion of their health care premium, fire people to make up the cost, or drop your health care insurance all together and tell you to go buy your owe. We will not cut our profits to assure your health is sustained at our expense. The truth about this bill is, only those who don't work are going to benefit. If you remember Obama said, "we've waiting 100 years for this bill to be passed" and now we finally have health care for everyone in America. I think he has his date in history crossed with another event. Socialized medicine was never a right or entitlement 100 years ago and it will never be a right or entitlement, well at least not "free" to the working class citizens.
ReplyDeleteIts a nightmare. I hope my son is healed from his health problems before we have to lose our insurance. I was just on a message board for another health issue and a person from New Zealand said they were not able to get a certain drug they needed because the "gov't didn't approve". That's where we are headed!
ReplyDeleteThe day the healtcare bill was in Obama's hand we got an e-mail from our employer telling us they were looking into what this bill meant as far as change in our coverage or price to us would be. They said we were good for the rest of this year without change, but, in Oct we were to see how much more this was going to cost us or if the medical care we now have will have to go down in quality. We all knew we were going to get a 20% increase before the Obamanator came along but now we're looking at 20% + 11% plus a reduction in healthcare quality. Talk about taking it in the shorts from all directions. Thanks Socialist, you've made earth a better place to live for all. You all of course are getting what you wanted, for us to be all be equal, but I'll bet you did think that meant equally poor, or did you?
ReplyDeleteWell misery loves company...the "rich" already knew they were going to get poor...but the poor don't care as long as nobody else is rich.
ReplyDeleteReaders- Again, I'll say great comments! The WSJ article mentioned above ("The Rich Can't Pay for Obamacare") makes the point that the more tax rates are raised on the "rich"...the less revenue comes into the federal coffers.
ReplyDeleteWhen Barack Obama was still a candidate, he was asked about this. Basically "if a tax increase on the wealthy means LESS money for the poor, why do it?" Obama's answer was "to make things more fair." In other words, bringing the top earners down is even more important to the president than bringing the bottom earners up.
We can easily see how this attitude is playing out in Obamacare; it doesn't matter if people aren't helped, as long as big business suffers.
As we've said many times before, Obamacare is about wealth redistribution and power. It has nothing to do with health.
I remember it being pointed out to him (again, on the campaign) that cutting taxes raises revenue. "It's not about raising revenue, it's about re-distribution of wealth"
ReplyDeleteI was utterly appalled. And now, we see the fruition