Will wonders never cease: Democrats discover taxes hurt businesses!
How cute: Fifteen Democratic senators who voted for Obamacare back in 2009 are asking Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to see that the excise tax on medical devices is not implemented for now.
Read their letter here. It ticks all the usual boxes for the kind of anti-tax arguments that Democrats typically reject out of hand:
- The industry “directly employs over 400,000 people in the United States and is responsible for a total of two million high-skilled manufacturing jobs.”
- The industry “is also one of the few that enjoys a net trade surplus…”
- Our economy has a need for “increasing exports, promoting small businesses, and growing high-tech manufacturing jobs for the future…”
- The slapdash way in which Obamacare was constructed, with major decisions punted to an unaccountable bureaucracy to make (OK, that’s not exactly how the senators put it), has caused “significant uncertainty and confusion for businesses.”
- Rather than moving forward with another punitive tax on a particular industry, it would be preferable “to develop a long-term solution to help move our economy forward, reduce our debt and reform our tax code…”
- Not moving forward with this tax “will benefit patients, innovators and boost our country’s economic growth.”
All of which are arguments that would have been helpful for these Democrats to make three years ago when they were rushing to pass Obamacare in the first place. Conservatives made these very same arguments at the time, only to have Democrats ram the law through Congress anyway.
It turns out that some of these senators represent states where the medical-device industry is particularly important. I guess they had to pass the bill to find out what was in it.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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356 comments Add your comment
bluecoat
December 11th, 2012
9:39 pm
Big Government? Obama Has 273,000 Fewer Federal Employees …
http://www.politicususa.com/big-government-obama-reagan.htmlWe have 35,000 less nonmilitary employees under President Obama than we had 30 years ago. … shrunk the number of federal employees, and paid down the national debt…
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 11th, 2012
9:44 pm
“paid down the national debt”
———————
And you wonder why you have zero credibility here?
md
December 11th, 2012
9:56 pm
“the blaze
Isn’t that my website?”
Good job Beck, shoot the messenger and ignore the message.
Google is your friend, instead of complaining about the source, simply google the story and read it from your source of choice, but then you wouldn’t have anything to complain about.
Johnny Boy says
December 11th, 2012
10:01 pm
Wonder when the libs will finally discover that taking 80% of every persons money, who makes over the magical 200k, won’t begin to cover this level of spending, now or ever !
Glenn Beck
December 11th, 2012
10:12 pm
md
You cry too much………… laugh a little
Glenn Beck
December 11th, 2012
10:14 pm
md
Before I go, how did that Allen West deal work out for you?
Remember how it was just odd to you and something was fishy? So how did that work out? Did the Republican Governor have the need or feel the need to step in?
thought so……… pout on
adios
md
December 11th, 2012
10:35 pm
“Before I go, how did that Allen West deal work out for you?”
Well beck, it’s like this. When a poster leads off a post with “it may or may not be relevant”, and it turns out to be irrelevant, then shock of shocks it’s basically irrelevant. Nothing to cry about, but it seems to keep you entertained so go for it.
bluecoat
December 11th, 2012
10:38 pm
Credibility just giving you some of your own.
Glen Beck
December 11th, 2012
11:07 pm
Md
You would have brought it back up had your little conspiracy ba played out as you hoped it would
Too bad and yes it is entertaining to call out your gullibility…
ODD OWL
December 11th, 2012
11:52 pm
@ stephenson Billings ==> Ignoramous…
ODD OWL
December 12th, 2012
12:10 am
President Obama should have allowed the Bush/Cheney tax cuts to expire two years ago… He could have save himself a lot of grieve… Non rich Republicans are simple minded… I guess that why they vote against their own best economic interest… Taxes are going up either by the acquiescence of Johnny “one note” Boehner or by falling off the fiscal cliff… All entitlement social programs are off the debt/deficit negotiating table… President Obama is leaving on a well deserved Christmas vacation in Hawaii around the 21st of December… Johnny one note don’t have much time…
Lynnie Gal
December 12th, 2012
12:54 am
What’s bad for businesses is not having customers. Businesses will hire when they have customers, not when they get a tax cut. Tax cuts don’t produce jobs. Look around you. Have the Bush tax cuts produced the jobs it promised?
About Obamacare, the bill would have been better, much better, if Republicans had gone along with a single payer plan. It would have been much better if there had been a public option. It would be good for businesses to take the employment equation completely out of healthcare. But Republicans would back off of their own healthcare ideas if they were embraced by Democrats and Obama. So we got a lesser plan than we could have had because of Republicans.
Jack ®
December 12th, 2012
5:37 am
Someone mentioned above that cost effective delivery of care would offset the tax on medical equipment. I’m wondering if that someone has ever changed a bedpan in a cost effective way. Brings to mind the sound of a bedpan being dropped on a hospital floor in the middle of the night.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
December 12th, 2012
6:45 am
Obama is running circles around Boehner with outrageous falsehoods, and Boehner cannot raise a peep to challenge him. Boehner has managed to allow Obama to turn the Bush middle class tax cuts, passed by a Republican majority Congress over 10 years ago, into the Obama middle class tax cuts, supposedly opposed by the House majority Republicans.
This so rightly called “lamestream” media fawningly covers all the dishonest, Calculated Deception that Obama proclaims over and over. But it will not cover what Boehner has to say in response.
My update is a lot more interesting than 12:10 is.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
6:49 am
Lynnie Gal: Tax cuts don’t produce jobs.
—————————-
There’s a much better argument to be made that tax cuts DO produce jobs than that tax increases create jobs. Obozo makes that argument every day when he talks about the middle class and their taxes going up $2000, and what that money (from the Bush tax cuts) allows them to do–spend.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
6:52 am
Lynnie Gal: About Obamacare, the bill would have been better, much better, if Republicans had gone along with a single payer plan
——————-
Why were Republicans needed to pass single payer? Obozocare didn’t get a single Republican vote, and passed anyway.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
7:04 am
Democrats smart enough to get elected know that tax increases are bad for the economy. They just don’t care. They’re not into economic growth. They’re into class warfare, getting even with the productive, and getting their low-information economically retarded base to turn out to vote.
Aesop's Fables and other Lib Economic Theories
December 12th, 2012
7:10 am
Government is like the person who gets in front of a parade and pretends to lead it. – Stossel
md
December 12th, 2012
7:34 am
“Too bad and yes it is entertaining to call out your gullibility…”
Interest in a story is now gullibility in your world? What did you do learn a new word this week and now have to trot it out?
Here’s a clue, if one runs across a story and adds a disclaimer that it may or may not be relevant, it hardly fits the definition of what you call gullibility. But you seem to like the word regardless of what it means so who am I to stop you from being silly.
Didn’t your daddy ever teach you to believe none of what you hear and half of what you see?
CC
December 12th, 2012
7:36 am
Lynnie Gal:
“About Obamacare, the bill would have been better, much better, if Republicans had gone along with a single payer plan. It would have been much better if there had been a public option. It would be good for businesses to take the employment equation completely out of healthcare. But Republicans would back off of their own healthcare ideas if they were embraced by Democrats and Obama. So we got a lesser plan than we could have had because of Republicans.”
Where were you when the bill that had to “be passed before the Congress could find out what was in the bill” passed? How did the Republicans in either the House or the Senate impact or change any part of the proposed legislation? I would suggest to you that Democrats held the necessary voting majorities in both Houses and didn’t give a damn what the Republicans thought or how they voted. THERE WAS NO COMPROMISE ON THIS DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLING POWER GRAB CALLED OBAMACARE.
Real Athens
December 12th, 2012
7:50 am
“Marx and Hitler…two sides of the same coin.”
That’s why there was that enormous Russian/Third Reich Axis we had to defeat in WWII.
Oh wait, no there wasn’t. The revisionist history on some of these blogs to make a point is absurd.
Any wonder people worry when Republicans start making education policy?
George P. Burdell
December 12th, 2012
7:59 am
This is one example of a recursive system that happens when you have government involvement and a non-competitive market. Normally, increasing the cost of a product would lead to less of that product being used. However, health care, especially under Obamacare, is not a competitive market because the people paying for the services used are not the customer. The insurance companies will be forced to charge more to cover this additional cost. They will not be able to deny marginal cases access to the products, or face the government wrath, so they will either pass along costs or eat them until it is no longer profitable to be a health insurer. The portion of devices used covered by a government program will be covered in part by the additional tax, but certainly not all of it. What it really was intended to do was hit higher income people who tend to use more of the medical device industry. All it really accomplishes is to push medical care even further from market efficiency even though the whole industry is so far away from that now that it is hard to discern how much further away it can move.
Reality
December 12th, 2012
8:02 am
Kyle -
Your blog is pitiful. Just pitiful. I may need to stop reading it totally. Your title has very little to do with the substance of the letter.
Leave it to the “spin doctors” of idiot conservative republican to twist words.
CC
December 12th, 2012
8:08 am
“Kyle – Your blog is pitiful. Just pitiful. I may need to stop reading it totally.”
Why wait for New Year’s resolutions? Begin not reading or posting here immediately!
curious
December 12th, 2012
8:18 am
Isn’t the excise tax exemption on medical devices one of the loopholes the Republicans propose to close?
JDW
December 12th, 2012
8:19 am
@Stevenson Billings…”“In the 1,420 days since he took the oath of office, the federal government has daily hired on average 101 new employees. Every day. Seven days a week. All 202 weeks. That makes 143,000 more federal workers than when Obama talked forever on that cold day in January of 2009.””
WOW what a stat…it really shows your grasp of history…not!
For example did you know that in the 2920 LONG LONG days that Duhbya was in charge the federal government added 302,000 employees…why that works out to about 104 employees per DAY EVERY DAY…hummmmm employment is down under Obama.
Must be abnormal for Repugnicans right…ummmmm…no…under “St. Ronnie” the federal government added 310,000 employees…why that works out to about 106 employees per DAY EVERY DAY…hummmmm I see a trend.
Lets check Clinton…from 1992 to 2000 the federal government ELIMINATED 629,000 employees…why that works out to about 215 employees CUT per DAY EVERY DAY…hummmmm I see a trend.
I believe we have it…want smaller govenment…elect Democrats!
DownInAlbany
December 12th, 2012
8:19 am
What’s missing by some here is a true understanding of the healthcare system. For the most part, medical device companies (more popularly know as, durable medical equipment companies) are reimbursed (paid) by third party payers (insurance companies) according to CPT (common procedural terminology) codes and fee schedules. If 12345 cpt code is billed, the insurance company pays an agreed upon fixed amount. The DME company is paid the exact same amount regardless of how much the equipment costs. Adding a tax to each piece of equipment only increases the cost of said equipment, not how much the company is paid by the insurance company. The DME company basically has to eat those taxes, leading to lay-offs, etc.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
8:23 am
The Strongest Economy in a Generation — If You’re a Government Worker
This article appeared on cato.org on November 25, 1996.
When Bill Clinton declared that 10.7 million new jobs have been created during his presidency, what he didn’t say is that a bundle of those jobs were created with your tax dollars. It turns out that under Clintonomics, the third fastest area of employment (behind the service and construction sector) is government.
Nearly 800,000 new government jobs have been added since January, 1993. Take out the decline in Pentagon employment and there are now nearly 1 million more non-defense government jobs than there were when Bill Clinton took office.
http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/strongest-economy-generation-youre-government-worker
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
8:27 am
While the number of federal workers is an interesting statistic, and while it’s generally true that fewer government workers means less mischief and less damage to our economy and institutions, the most important indicator of government growth is spending. And on that count, Obozo is the worst president since WWII, spending an un-American 25% of GDP, an increase of several percentage points over his predecessor, Our President Bush.
JDW
December 12th, 2012
8:30 am
@LBB…”Nearly 800,000 new government jobs have been added since January, 1993.”
EVERY one of those was at the state and local level. From January 1993 to the end of 1996 federal employment was REDUCED by 404,000. That was 161,000 departmental employees, 237,000 military personnel and 5000 judicial employees.
http://www.opm.gov/feddata/historicaltables/totalgovernmentsince1962.asp
JDW
December 12th, 2012
8:32 am
@LBB…”an increase of several percentage points over his predecessor, Our President Bush.”
That’s what happens when you TRASH the denominator…in this case the economy…thanks a bunch Duhbya!
Hopeful
December 12th, 2012
8:40 am
Is the taxes Affected Lockheed is that why their moving?
Del
December 12th, 2012
8:42 am
Another example as to how political passing ObamaCare really was with the Democrats. They’re just now discovering what a turkey this bill really is and as Pelosi said “the bill needs to be passed to see what’s in it”. Sadly these idiots didn’t fully understand what they wanted to pass.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
December 12th, 2012
8:47 am
Twinkie CEO Admits Company Took Employees Pensions and Put It Toward Executive Pay
Cons can’t comprehend the meaning of that sentence.
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
December 12th, 2012
8:49 am
Just last month, a judge agreed to let Hostess executives suck another $1.8 million out of the bankrupt company to pay bonuses to CEOs.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
8:51 am
JDW: That’s what happens when you TRASH the denominator…in this case the economy…thanks a bunch Duhbya!
———————–
Wrong. That’s what happens when you increase spending from $3 trillion per year to $3.7 trillion per year, as Obozo has done. The denominator is just fine, Obozo having inherited a recovery.
Real GDP (JDW’s “denominator”) by year in millions of 2005 dollars:
2001 11,347,200
2002 11,543,100
2003 11,836,400
2004 12,246,900
2005 12,623,000
2006 12,958,500
2007 13,206,400
2008 13,161,900
2009 12,703,100
2010 13,088,000
2011 13,315,100
Once again, you’ve trifled with the wrong person, JDW. You should know better by now.
Mary Grabar
December 12th, 2012
8:54 am
I wonder what will happen to them now. How dare they object! Will they raise other objections? Will they dare object to death panels when their constituents want their grannies to get the pace maker? Remember what happened to Trotsky.
Cherokee
December 12th, 2012
8:54 am
Oh good grief.
Businesses thrive because of taxes – which pay for the ports and roads and airports they use to get their products to markets, and the legal system which protects their intellectual properties, and educates their workers, and the export and business assistance offered by the government, and on and on.
Elections Have Consequences
December 12th, 2012
8:57 am
“That’s what happens when you TRASH the denominator…in this case the economy…thanks a bunch Duhbya!”
Still blaming Bush, I see. Does Obama ever own this economy? Or does he get another 4 year hall pass?
Real Athens
December 12th, 2012
9:11 am
Still blaming Bush because that is where the blame lies. Hate the message, not the messenger.
Read the first paragraph:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3849
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
December 12th, 2012
9:11 am
Sorry but Democrats aren’t calling it a turkey, Del. Those “limited” ideas which pop into your head bear very little resemblance to reality.
But if that narrative works for you…..
Real Athens
December 12th, 2012
9:19 am
Hell, the next Republican President will be blaming Bush. He wasn’t even a footnote in the last election. No one mentioned his name. I don’t recall a single candidate referring to him as “our President Bush”.
JDW
December 12th, 2012
9:22 am
@LBB…
I suppose the faucet of Duhbya’s mismanagement just turned off on January 20, 2009…yeah right. You should move to Colorado LBB…less chance of getting arrested for that stuff you are smoking.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
9:23 am
Nice try, Real Athens, but an opinion piece from a proglodyte special interest group isn’t very convincing.
Have we just been on autopilot these last four years? I guess we should have elected someone who would actually do something to improve economic growth, reduce unemployment, and get government deficits under control. Elections have consequences.
Lil' Barry Bailout - OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
9:24 am
JDW has nothing. Just like his messiah, four years into it.
JDW
December 12th, 2012
9:27 am
@Real Athens…that Figure 1 chart is startling isn’t it…Duhbya…”The Gift that Keeps on Giving!”
Kyle you should take a look…you might understand. LBB don’t bother it will make your head explode.
Real Athens
December 12th, 2012
9:34 am
“an opinion piece from a proglodyte special interest group isn’t very convincing.” From a person who quotes the Cato Institute on the very same page.
You can’t make this stuff up
Finn McCool (The System isn't Broken; It's Fixed)
December 12th, 2012
9:42 am
Kyle thinks that after you sign a bill into law the implementation and infrastructure magically appear in place.
What we have here is the realities of implementation. Not everything is spelled out and you learn to adjust.
Lil' Barry Bailout -OBAMAPHONE!!!
December 12th, 2012
9:44 am
A real American president would have taken steps to improve the situation, as Our President Bush did after inheriting the dot-com implosion and the Islamofascist terrorism problem.
TheDixieDove
December 12th, 2012
9:47 am
My Christmas Wish List for 2nd Obama Term
Dear Santa,
What I want for Christmas in a second term for President Obama is for these things to happen.
Stipulated: The main thing that has to happen if the USA is to succeed is that the most wealthy must pay similar rates of taxes as they did from 1932 to 1981, when America was great!
1. Please let the drug war come to an end. This has been the longest and most hurtful and dumb war in the history of the human race. This war is killing us in rural America and Urban America and in South America and all the way to Afghanistan. I think a US president has the power to end it. Please let that happen.
2. Can we finally normalize our relations with Cuba? This is a win win win win situation for everybody involved, but because of old grudges we still don’t do it. Please give us that. It would send a message of peace and love and progress to the whole world.
3. Please let people marry whoever they want. I guess this one’s the easiest and most obvious of all. It’s a good thing for everybody and it naturally occurs without anyone noticing anyway, essentially, please let us make it legal.
Come on Santa! I know you can do it!