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Baucus wants to tax your health benefits, unless you're lucky enough to have a union contract

DCblogger's picture
Submitted by DCblogger on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 2:52pm
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Versailles Villagers
Baucus
health care reform
LIUNA

UPDATE: How this hair brained scheme came into existence.

U.S. Senate proposal avoids healthcare taxes for union workers

Senator Baucus has been the lead champion on the issue of taxing healthcare benefits to offset the costs of the healthcare reform proposals currently circulating among legislators. President Obama and fellow Democratic lawmakers have run into resistance from Rustbelt Democrats on the question of taxing healthcare benefits for unionized workers.

The proposal from Senator Baucus - which would exempt 12.4 percent of the American workforce - is in answer to that resistance.

This just makes a bad proposal worse.

Never forget, the reason they need all this money ins't to provide health care to people who don't have it, it is to subsidize health insurance parasites. Under a single payer system we would save $350 BILLION a year.

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BDBlue's picture
Submitted by BDBlue on

Sounds like a way to try to buy off union workers and, as an added bonus, will later foster resentment of union workers. It's a double gift to the GOP. Thanks, Max!

sj's picture
Submitted by sj on

It boggles my mind that the robber barons have convinced the workers at large that collective bargaining is somehow a bad thing.

Crazy. We are giving more and more of our lives over to work, have zero job security and unions are the problem?

What's up with that?

gqmartinez's picture
Submitted by gqmartinez on

For some reason, every time I think of Howard Zinn's "People's History", I think of the higher classes using a divide and conquer strategy. There are probably many things to learn from that book, and if I were more smarter I'd probably remember them, but that's the one that sticks out for me.

The best way to avoid a true class war is to keep the middle and lower classes fighting with each other. Reading this plan instantly made me think this was a ploy to start union busting sometime in the future.

If our liberal intellectuals delved into coherent and strong philosophical arguments, rather than electoral politics, wed be able to make a stronger case for unionization. Sigh.

Damon's picture
Submitted by Damon on

That would be exactly the outcome of this.

Why, oh why, did they elevate this ass as the go-to-guy on health care in the Senate? It's as if he's actively trying to contrive the most fucked-up system in history, which would actually be a feat in itself considering how big a disaster the system already is.

So, really, what kind of game is this, now? Is this some kind of ploy (after everybody fairly reacts to this as discriminatory) to make sure everyone ends up getting taxed?

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