ObamaCare is already under bipartisan siege

[Perchoutofwater]

The 1099 Insurrection

The White House fights an effort to ease a burden on small business.

 

You might not have seen it reported, but the Senate will vote this morning on whether to repeal part of ObamaCare that it passed only months ago. The White House is opposed, but this fight is likely to be the first of many as Americans discover—as Nancy Pelosi once famously predicted—what's in the bill.

 

The Senate will vote on amendments to the White House small business bill that would rescind an ObamaCare mandate that companies track and submit to the IRS all business-to-business transactions over $600 annually. Democrats tucked the 1099 reporting footnote into the bill to raise an estimated $17.1 billion, part of the effort to claim that ObamaCare reduces the deficit by $100 billion or so.

 

But this "tax gap" of unreported business income is largely a Beltway myth, and no less than the Treasury Department's National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson says the costs will be "disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvements in tax compliance."

 

Meanwhile, small businesses are staring in horror toward 2013, when the 1099 mandate will hit more than 30 million of them. Currently businesses only have to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase from vendors and the like. Under the new rules, they'll have to report the value of goods and merchandise they purchase as well, adding vast accounting and paperwork costs.

ObamaCare Videos

 

Think about a midsized trucking company. The back office would have to collect hundreds of thousands of receipts from every gas station where its drivers filled up and figure out where it spent more than $600 that year. Then it would also need to match those payments to the stations' corporate parents.

 

Most Democrats now claim they were blindsided and didn't understand the implications of the 1099 provision—which is typical of the slapdash, destructive way the bill was written and passed. As the critics claimed, most Members had no idea what they were voting on. Some 239 House Democrats voted to dump the 1099 provision in August, and the repeal would have passed except Speaker Pelosi rigged the vote procedurally so it needed a two-thirds majority. She thus gave Democrats the cover of a repeal vote without actually repealing it.

 

In the Senate today, Nebraska Republican Mike Johanns will offer his amendment to scrap the new 1099 rules altogether. But the White House is opposing this because it fears it would set a precedent for repealing the larger health bill. Over the weekend the Treasury Department pronounced the Johanns amendment "not acceptable in its current form."

 

Yesterday the White House endorsed a competing proposal from Florida Democrat Bill Nelson that would increase the 1099 threshold to $5,000 and exempt businesses with fewer than 25 workers. Yet this is little more than a rearguard action in favor of the status quo; the Nelson amendment leaves the basic architecture unchanged while making the problem more complex.

 

Businesses would still have to track all purchases, not knowing in advance which contractors will exceed $5,000 at the end of the year. It also creates a marginal barrier to job creation—for a smaller firm, hiring a 26th employee would be extremely costly. The Nelson amendment also includes new taxes on domestic oil production, as every Democratic bill now seems to do.

 

As of yesterday, no one was sure if either amendment would get 60 votes, though Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is cosponsoring the Johanns version. Enough Democrats may bend to White House wishes and produce a stalemate, but this issue won't go away. The President's opposition to a clean repeal shows the hollowness of his alleged support for small business, which he expresses at every campaign stop but is less a priority than preserving his health-care legacy.

 

The larger political story here is that ObamaCare is already under bipartisan siege—and in the same Congress that passed it. The 1099 provision is only one plank, but repealing the law plank by plank may be the right strategy. Sooner or later the whole thing becomes unworkable. Voters should watch this vote to see who's really on the side of small business.

 

WSJ

[driveby]

Now that's hope and change I can believe in.

[Jimmy Neutron]

Also read yesterday that the State's case against Obamacare is definately going to court in at least 2 states. I hope it ends up in the USSC and Obamacare is gutted like a fish.

[SEC=UGA]

Also read yesterday that the State's case against Obamacare is definately going to court in at least 2 states. I hope it ends up in the USSC and Obamacare is gutted like a fish.

 

Why do you hate Americans and want people to needlessly die because corporate greed has made it impossible for them afford an inalienable human right such as health care? Something needs to be done, they are making RECORD PROFITS at the expense of the well being of your fellow countrymen!!!

 

YOU EVIL BASTARD!!!!

[SayItAintSoJoe]

Johann's amendment was vote down by the dems and Nelson's was filibustered by the republicans.

 

I think the 1099 requirement is stupid and should have been eliminated but I would have taken the minimum raised from $600 to $5000 if that was all I could get. As it stands now the minimum will be $600. I don't get how filibustering the change in the minimum from $600 to $5000 helps small business.

[Perchoutofwater]

Johann's amendment was vote down by the dems and Nelson's was filibustered by the republicans.

 

I think the 1099 requirement is stupid and should have been eliminated but I would have taken the minimum raised from $600 to $5000 if that was all I could get. As it stands now the minimum will be $600. I don't get how filibustering the change in the minimum from $600 to $5000 helps small business.

 

Simple, with it being at 600 it affects a lot more people, which will cause more outrage. It goes back to what I've always said about the death tax, if everyone was forced to sell of their parents stuff to pay for the next welfare handout, then there would be enough outrage to do away with the death tax all together. As long as it only affects relatively few people are ok with class warfare. The same applies to pretty much all taxes. If everyone was taxed the same, you'd see the average tax bill go way down because people would be voting these jokers out of office for wasting all of our money. As it is, we wast the money of the Top 10% or so 40% pay very little, and almost 50% actually get paid.

[driveby]

Since the beginning of Congress’s August recess, Democratic candidates have poured $930,000 into ads deriding the health overhaul but just $300,000 in pro-reform spots, according to Evan Tracey at Kantar Media.

[driveby]

Is Jimmah Carta a senile old windbag or what?

 

Although I do think just a bit more highly of Teddy now.

[driveby]

Is Jimmah Carta a senile old windbag or what?

 

Although I do think just a bit more highly of Teddy now.

Like I said.........

[bpwallace49]

AP Poll: Health care law making us muddle-minded

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EmailPrint.. AP – Graphic shows poll results on opinions about the health care law

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By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and TREVOR TOMPSON, Associated Press Writers Ricardo Alonso-zaldivar And Trevor Tompson, Associated Press Writers – 51 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Six months after President Barack Obama signed the landmark health care law, the nation still doesn't really know what's in it.

 

More than half of Americans mistakenly believe the overhaul will raise taxes for most people this year, an Associated Press poll finds. But that would be true only if most people were devoted to indoor tanning, which got hit with a sales tax.

 

Many who wanted the health care system to be overhauled don't realize that some provisions they cared about actually did make it in. And about a quarter of supporters don't understand that something hardly anyone wanted didn't make it: They mistakenly say the law will set up panels of bureaucrats to make decisions about people's care — what critics labeled "death panels."

 

The uncertainty and confusion amount to a dismal verdict for the Obama administration's campaign to win over public opinion. Before the final votes in Congress, Obama personally assured wavering Democrats he'd take the case to the American people after the law passed. But it hasn't worked. And in the final stretch before the midterm elections Republicans are united by their call for repeal.

 

"I'm insecure about a document that was as big as the health care bill and wonder if anybody understands exactly what's in it," said Diann Kelley, 61, a retiree from Marietta, Ga., who says she's "somewhat opposed" to the law. The AP poll was conducted by Stanford University with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

"The main fear is the cost," explained Kelley. "I'm not sure that we can afford to take on something quite as massive as the health care reform with the economy the way it is."

 

It's not that Kelley has a negative opinion about everything in the law. The prohibition on health insurance companies denying coverage to people because of pre-existing medical conditions "is really a fine idea," she said.

 

The poll's questions included a true-or-false quiz on 19 items, some of which are in the law and others not. People were also asked how confident they were about their answers.

 

For the most part, majorities picked the right answers. But a sizable number also got things wrong. And right or wrong, people were unsure of their answers. Two-thirds or more were uncertain about their responses on eight of nine core provisions of the legislation.

 

Analysis of the findings indicated a split as far as the impact of accurate knowledge, between Democrats and independents on one side and Republicans on the other.

 

Accurate knowledge of the law made no difference in overwhelming opposition from Republicans.

 

Michael Cagnina, 33, a web developer from Powhatan, Va., summed it up: "It just doesn't make me feel comfortable that the government is going to give people free health care but ultimately the government's money is my money."

 

However, for Democrats and independents, the more accurate knowledge people had of the bill, the more they liked it.

 

"Among Democrats and independents, the lack of knowledge is suppressing public approval of the bill," said Stanford political science professor Jon Krosnick, who directed the university's participation. "Although the president and others have done a great deal to educate people about what is in this bill, the process has not been particularly successful."

 

The White House is staging an event Wednesday to mark the six-month anniversary of Obama signing the bill. The president and top administration officials will be joined by people from around the country who are already benefiting from such popular provisions as allowing adult children to remain on their parents' insurance until they reach 26.

 

Will it make a difference?

 

The poll shows Obama has yet to find the right wavelength for communicating even information that's relatively straightforward. One question stood out as an example:

 

People were asked whether the Congressional Budget Office had ruled that the legislation would probably increase the government's debt, or whether the nonpartisan budget analysts found that the health law would reduce red ink. (Correct answer: CBO found it would reduce the federal deficit over time.)

 

But 81 percent in the survey got the wrong answer, including a majorities of both supporters and opponents — even though Obama seldom misses a chance to remind audiences of CBO's favorable report.

 

Overall, three out of ten in the poll said they favored the law, while four in ten said they were opposed. Another 30 percent were neutral. The findings on support and opposition differ from another recent AP poll, but the two surveys cannot be compared because they were drawn up and carried out differently.

 

The other survey, an AP-GfK political poll, found 41 percent supporting the bill and 46 percent opposing it, with only 12 percent neutral.

 

The new survey was conducted Aug. 31 to Sept. 7, and involved interviews with 1,251 randomly chosen adults nationwide. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

 

The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks, which first chose people for the study using randomly generated telephone numbers and home addresses. Once people were selected to participate, they were interviewed online. Participants without Internet access were provided it for free.