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There is some good news and bad news today on how Harry Reid plans to pay for health care reform. It looks like instead of increasing the Medicare tax for people making over $250,000 (as was reported earlier), Reid is thinking about applying the Medicare tax to those individual’s capital gains. This seems like a smart way to raise money and should be a relatively easier sell, as tax increase go. It could be framed as a tax fairness issue. “Why do working class people pay Medicare payroll taxes on their money, but the traders on Wall Street don’t?”
One new idea that’s “in play” is to apply Medicare taxes to capital gains earned by wealthy Americans, Orszag said. That would allow lawmakers to make up some of the money lost by scaling back a proposed levy on high-end insurance plans.
Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have sought input on the idea from staffers for senators such as Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, and Olympia Snowe of Maine, the only Republican senator to vote for the legislation, according to two congressional aides who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The bad news is the Reid is consulting with Olympia Snowe on the matter. Olympia Snowe has terrible ideas that she is demanding be part of health care reform. She simply will not support smart health care reform. If Reid is consulting with her to get her back on board, then he is presumably still thinking about going with a trigger. That would be very bad news. Progressives will not react kindly if Reid’s back up plan is to gut reform for Snowe’s vote. Anything less than using reconciliation to get a strong reform with a real public option would be seen as completely unacceptable.
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My sentiments exactly. If they fuck this up I will no longer vote for Flaccidcrats. I’ve already stopped donating money to them (except through Act Blue and similar organizations).
WTF is it with this goofball? Has he told a couple of his cronies to introduce Stupak language into the bill as well? Reid says he knows Short Ride. I would suggest Reid doesn’t know jack.
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…oh, and FUCK Olympia Snowe. Didn’t Reid see Joe Cao’s vote made HCR all bi-partisan-y already. FUCK her.
I have a pretty good idea;
copay of about 10 dollars to 50 dollars (or whatever), that copay goes for the public option, the copay is payed by everyone no matter who they are insured with
if a person gets mad they have to pay a copay toward the public option they are welcome to opt into the public option themselves
just thought of that idea in my own head right now, I have no idea if it actually plays that well or if the copay would amount to anything
get this!
think progress has a GREAT discovery;
THE RNC INSURANCE COVERS ABORTION!!!!
THINK PROGRESS IS THE TITS! (pardon the expression, it’s the boy in me that couldn’t resist the irony)
Snowe Cao makes a bill bipartisan. Wow. Who knew. That term used to mean something.. these days it means one confused Mainer and a single guilt-stricken Jesuit Seminarian.
The cap gains tax increase proposal is very welcome though. That’ll apply to unarned stock option gains that form such huge proportions of those executive bonuses too, right?
Okay, so Mike Lux says we need to build something to improve upon. Frankly the public option as a benefit plan will be just about useless, but there is something very interesting to establishing funding streams for an eventual single-payer system (and cutting the rich down to a reasonably large size).
As progressives, our only real course of action at this point is to kill this corporate welfare/anti abortion rights bill. It is so bad that triggers and opt outs aren’t going to make it that much worse. We need to just get the insurance reforms for pre-existing conditions and rescission past in stand alone legislation and either get back to it next year or just primary the whole lot of them out even if it means waiting until 2012 and primary Obama out of the White House. If we wait four more years to get a real progressive in POTUS and get reform passed that first year that goes into effect immediately (that used to be one of our prerequisites), it is still the same time frame as this turd they want to pass now.
Unbelievable, perris. Hypocrisy, anyone? OTOH, do we really want more Republicans being born? ;-)
The irony!
Unacceptable to the public but it would seem completely acceptable to Obama.
Since 1991.
Under review now, they say.
Harry Reid should be worrying about his own seat, and any compromise with Snowe is going to bode poorly for Harry.
Olympia Snowe told people in Maine yesterday she would not vote for health reform this year under any circumstances. She thinks we need more time to think it through. How this is different from what every other Republican is saying I’m not sure.
Reid’s tax increase on capital gains will generate $100 billion over 10 years. That’s a significant watering-down of the House bill which will raise amost $500 billion from the millionaire tax over 10 years. By way of comparison the Cadillac tax will raise $200 billion during the first 10 years and much more after that.
I oppose using the capital gains tax to pay for reform, because Congress has shown tremendous willingness to lower this tax over the years, particularly in response to what other countries do. It is not a new secure revenue stream like the millionaire tax. I oppose the Cadillac tax because it violates Obama’s pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class and falls disproportionately on the sick and on unions.
Forget about Snowe. She is part of the enemy. She is part of the crowd that will not vote for any progress.
This is great news (though not surprising.)
IMO, Specter is to stimulus as Snowe is to health care. I think Snowe will vote for it, despite what she said. She’s making a last ditch effort to shore up her numbers among Maine Republicans which are dismal. Once she fails and realizes she can never win another Republican primary again, she’ll have a new calculus. I think she’ll be more likely to vote for it than Lieberman or Nelson, who I don’t think will…thus reconciliation will be the only route and Snowe’s vote won’t matter. Anyway, no harm in talking to her, I guarantee Reid didn’t give her hope on triggers.