-By Warner Todd Huston
Yesterday I posted a story about how the two big public employees unions were looking the other way on Obamacare and helping Obama to pass his socialist take over of our healthcare system even though the plan would hike taxes on their very own members and would devastate their helathcare plans. Well, not all unions are willing to hurt their own membership merely for political reasons.
Of course, in the past we’ve posted stories (here, and here) pointing out that there are the several unions that are not bending over backwards just to hand Obama a political victory and today The New York Post reported on several New York unions that are just as unhappy as those that we’ve previously mentioned.
In the Post we find several local New York unions bristling at the inclusion of the so-called Cadillac healthcare tax plan in Obamacare, a plan that Obama just recently said he approved of even as he consistently claimed previously that he opposed.
“The proposed tax is both terrible politics and bad policy, and it’s going to seriously undermine good health-care coverage for literally tens of millions of middle-class workers,” fumed Bob Master, legislative and political director for Communication Workers of America’s Northeast chapter.
At issue is the fact that for decades these unions have negotiated richer and richer benefits and healthcare plans and many thousands of these union members are realizing that as far as Obama is concerned they are to be considered “rich” folks and deserve to be taxed at confiscatory levels.
Some of these union folks are warning Democrats that if this tax stands many union members will simply “say home” during the upcoming elections denying Democrats the previously large majorities they enjoyed only a year ago.
The main reason why Obama wants this tax to stand is to destroy private healthcare plans so that everyone will be forced to beg to the federal government for their healthcare. As far as the Senate goes, they justify the idea by assuming it will somehow raise the revenue that Obamacare will need to be viable. Naturally, that claim is false. All that will happen is that such plans will cease to exist because the tax will kill them off and the taxes that were supposed to be “raised” will evaporate leaving yet another black hole of spending that cannot be paid for.
So, as I’ve said before, this is a complaint with which I can agree with the unions. The Cadillac tax is a bad idea. Then again, all of Obamacare is a disaster that will materially harm every single American now and on into the future.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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