Again, more evidence that the Democrats have pursued and championed legislation that they fail to examine the longer term ramifications of its provisions. Case in point, the Affordable Care Act. Remember the whole “we have to pass the bill to see what’s in it” speech by Rep. Pelosi? Well, clearly they didn’t even think about what was in the bill before they passed it.
The CLASS Act – a provision that had government insurance covering long-term care under the marketing ploy of “reducing the deficit” – was suspended by the administration. Then the so-called “1099 provisions” were repealed which removed funding from identifying transactions that may be taxable. Finally, the medical device industry (largely found in Minnesota) has convinced its two Democrat senators, Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, to seek the delay and eventual repeal of the medical device tax. During the passage of the ACA, these two senators were part of a group who successfully reduced the proposed tax down to the current 2.3%. But now that its January 1st, 2013 implementation date is looming around the corner, we get the following from Sen. Franken:
I want to repeal the medical device tax altogether But I am concerned that we are running out of time before this job-killing tax goes into effect. So, for now, the best thing to do to ensure that this important industry continues to create jobs and producing life-saving devices is to delay this unwise tax.
A group of 16 Democratic senators authored a letter to the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, which included the following:
The medical technology industry directly employs over 400,000 people in the United States and is responsible for a total of two million skilled manufacturing jobs. We must do all we can to ensure that our country maintains its global leadership position in the medical technology industry and keeps good jobs here at home. [the medical device industry] has received little guidance about how to comply with the tax.
So they didn’t think about this beforehand, and a 2.3% tax on medical devices is “job killing” for 400,000 American workers and 2 million skilled manufacturing jobs, and neither the bill nor the executive branch has given the industry sufficient information about how to comply with a tax that will go into effect in 3 weeks. Seriously?
Once all these taxes have been repealed, how do these Democrats think the ACA is going to be funded? Have they thought that far down the road? Probably not.