Democrats Might Exempt Unions From Taxes
Jun 28, 2009 Political
The plan to tax health care benefits is on the table and will likely be put into place if this abortion of a health care plan passes. Democrats need a way to pay for the plan so they will take your taxes to pay for others and then they will tax your health benefits to pay for others. Incidentally, Barack Obama made a big deal out of McCain’s proposal to tax health benefits during one of the debates. This is something he said was unprecedented (it is) and that he did not favor that idea. Now he says that Congress is dealing with this. If it happens Obama should man up and veto it. He won’t.
I have a problem with benefits being taxed. People are generally paid lower salaries because of the cost of health care and the tax exempt status of it allows them to keep a little more of their money. If the government starts taxing it then our wages are effectively cut. We will not get paid more to make up the difference.
The article discussing this (link below) states that only high value or “gold plated” plans are the object of taxation but don’t let this fool you. Once they have the tax in they can adjust it anyway they want. They will start lowering the bar as the cost of the plan increases (and it will). This is also not the only plan being considered. It is wise to keep both eyes open when Democrats are talking about raising taxes. The whole gold plated idea is another redistribute the wealth philosophy of Obama. God forbid private business takes good care of an employee.
Perhaps we should take a close look at what the members of Congress and Obama gets. The perks with regard to health care are out of this world. There is a whole floor at Walter Reed dedicated to taking care of these people. It is never full but costs nearly a million a year to operate. Let Obama get sick and he is off to Bethesda. Let a Congressman have a brain tumor and he gets great care and then is transferred for even better care. Hell, they have a physician at the Capitol (or in one of the common buildings) to tend to them during the day so they do not have to miss work.
Let’s start taxing that…
The Democrats need to make this plan easy on their constituents so they are considering exempting unions from the tax. The plan is that any benefit (and union benefits are good ones) received as a part of collective bargaining would be exempt from the tax. Why is this? This would seem to violate the equal protection clause of the Constitution.
I have a few thoughts on it. First, the Democrats cannot tick off the unions or they will lose a lot of elections. The unions are a main voting block for Democrats and they cannot afford to lose it. Second, this might be a backdoor way of increasing union membership without the unconstitutional (and inappropriately named) Employee Free Choice Act. If government exempts unions then maybe more people will want to join unions or have their shops become unionized in order to avoid the taxes.
I am not sure which but there is no way that people should stand still and allow this to happen. If they exempt unions then those of us not in unions should consider making a conscious effort NOT to purchase any product made by union employees (the unions recently did this with their “Made in China” plastic hats. Put them out of business.
But we should definitely ensure that anyone who votes for it is beaten in the next election.
Source:
Bloomberg
Tags: Democrats, gold plated, health care, taxes, unions exempt