As of now it looks like the final bill will contain taxes on employer paid health benefits to pay for subsidies to low income Americans to buy private insurance and a mandate that everyone have insurance. In other words a bail out for health insurance companies.

There is no popular support for taxes on employer paid health benefits. It is one of many reasons that John McCain went down to a landslide defeat.

No Republican will vote for this. Democrats will take all the blame for a tax increase to pay for a bail out of insurance companies.

It will NOT expand access to health care. It will be very unpopular. If Obama or any other Democrat thinks that AHIP will have their backs they are out of their mind.

Liberals need to block this and save the party from the leadersheep.

A friend of mine likes to joke that "all Republicans are socialists," meaning that when it comes to the government handing out free money to bankers, large off-shore HQ'd corporations, or Red Staters sucking the Federal tit, they just can't say "No." We've spent a lot of time mocking them for the hypocrisy in this, as it comes from those people who are at the same time, the most loudly against "welfare" and other entitlements and funding for the rest of us. I bring this obvious set of points up, because I think it's time to do some real pushback, and perhaps use this framing as a wedge, against the notion that "tax cuts are good," and "tax increases are bad." In fact, historically and economically speaking, the very opposite is true.

The chatter is that the new administration started out offering 1/3 or 25% of the stimulus package in tax cuts, and the Republicans came back with, and received, the ~40% that are found in the most current form of the stimulus bill. Talk about dumb "strategy." Hasn't anyone in the Administration ever bought a rug in the Middle East? Haggling rule #1: your first offer should be offensively too low.

"Why should KitchenAid make blenders and health care coverage decisions? Why should lumber companies cut trees and create hospital networks?"

Ezra Klein asks and gives some reasons why , and the New Republic too: Why CEOs Don't Get It on Health Care

2 thoughts -

1) April consumer credit is way up, the highest since Nov, and a total surprise to everyone who should know. Nov is right before Christmas, so that is naturally a high spot. What happens in April?

Looks like the Corrente Collective is on an economics kick today, so here's mine. Stirling Newberry has a terrific post over at TPM Cafe today which he calls "If You Hate The Boom You Are Going to Positively Loathe The Recession." Have you been wondering why "the economy" is allegedly so great on paper when it is steadily getting worse in your personal pocketbook? Listen my children and you shall hear:

Inflation, to the extent that a government benefits from it, is a kind of tax. Americans have been trained to point the shotgun of their vote squarely at their own foot on the tax issue. They have been trained to hate visible taxes like the income tax, and love stealth taxes. Inflation is a stealth tax, in that you can't tell who is collecting it, how it falls on people, or what its overall effects are. It simply eats away at your living standard and savings, and the benefits flow to those who have the power to spend that taxed standard of living.