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Thursday, September 17, 2009
10:07 AM EDT
Wallace Forman

Democrat Senator Rips Middle Class Taxes in the Baucus Health Care Bill

Senator Baucus released his supposedly “moderate” health care proposal yesterday, and he is already drawing fire from Democrat Senator Jay Rockefeller (W. Va..) for raising taxes! Rockefeller complained that:

[Baucus] should understand that (his proposal) means that virtually every single coal miner is going to have a big, big tax put on them because the tax will be put on the company and the company will immediately pass it down and lower benefits because they are self insured, most of them, because they are larger.
Rockefeller is no doubt worried that the tax will fall on the wrong sort of taxpayers – his own constituents. “Cadillac coverage”, ironically enough, is most common among some groups of the lower and middle class. West Virginia’s coal industry is heavily unionized, and these unions have negotiated generous benefit packages for their members. These workers and older, sicker Americans with high premiums, will bear the brunt of Baucus’s proposed tax. The AFL-CIO, for one, is not pleased.
 
Americans for Tax Reform agrees that this tax hike is a bad idea. But the solution is not to dump the tax on another group of voters that happen to live outside of West Virginia, as Senator Rockefeller no doubt prefers. The solution is to enact consumer-based health care reforms that don’t require the Baucus bill’s $900 billion increase in wasteful spending.
Posted by Wallace Forman on Thursday, September 17, 2009 10:07 AM EDT
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