Voices of Health Reform: Jim’s Story 24JAN11

ANOTHER testimony from a regular American about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act....the gop and tea-baggers like to stir up hate and anger and resentment about health care reform for the nation, and are determined to repeal it....WHILE KEEPING THEIR GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED HEALTH CARE AND PENSIONS BECAUSE THEY FEEL THEY ARE ENTITLED TO THEM!
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series where readers can meet average Americans already benefiting from the health reform law, the Affordable Care Act.
Jim Houser and his wife have owned an auto repair shop in Portland, Oregon for over 25 years, and it’s important to them to retain their employees and keep them healthy. They invest time, energy and money to train their workers and they don’t want to lose valuable employees.
That’s why Jim has always provided health insurance to his employees. But in the last ten years, Jim has been forced to contend with skyrocketing premium increases, with premiums making up over 20% of his payroll.
Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Jim and small business owners like him are getting immediate relief.
The health reform law provides tax credits for small businesses that offer employees health insurance. Up to 4 million small businesses could be eligible for relief from high health insurance premiums and, according to the independent Congressional Budget Office, the tax credit will save small businesses $40 billion by 2019. And small business owners like Jim are benefiting from the tax credit today. Jim estimates that the tax credits will save him over $10,000.
Tax credits aren’t the only benefit for small businesses in the Affordable Care Act. The law creates new, competitive state-based insurance Exchanges.  Exchanges will enable individuals and small businesses to pool together and use their market strength to buy coverage at a lower cost, the same way large employers do today, giving them the freedom to launch their own companies without worrying whether health care will be available when they need it.
Small businesses are the engine of our economy and President Obama and his team will continue to do all we can to help small businesses grow, create jobs and succeed. That’s why the President called on Congress to eliminate the overly burdensome 1099 reporting requirement requires businesses to report to the IRS all purchases that exceed $600.
As Jim notes, the Affordable Care Act is already helping businesses like his “offer the kind of support that keeps employees with your company.” Listen to his story:

Chart of the Day: Tax Cut Fever & GOP Cynicism Gone Wild from MOJO 30 NOV10 & 2DEZ10

HERE'S the difference in tax cut proposals in simple terms and a simple blue & red graph. AND it offers more proof of how corporate America / Republicorp deceived and manipulated the electorate (many willingly deceived and manipulated due to their prejudice and voluntary ignorance) to vote for the gop and tea-bagger candidates in the last elections. BY THE BY, if you didn't vote then you are responsible for this too because DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!

Speaking of tax cuts, I thought everyone should see a nice picture that compares the Obama position with the Republican position. As you can see, under the Obama plan (in blue) everyone gets a tax cut. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, your average middle class household gets a cut of $916. An upper middle class household gets $3,766. A millionaire household gets $6,349. Money for everyone!
But that's not enough. The red lines roughly show the additional tax cuts under the Republican plan. Everyone making up to $250,000 gets nothing. But the tiny number of households above that threshold get huge pots of money, and the pots get bigger the more money they make. I don't have enough room on the blog to show it properly, but millionaire households get an extra $100,000 or so over and above what they'd get from Obama's broad tax cut.
That's what we're fighting over: a broad tax cut with something for everybody, or a broad tax cut plus an extra bonus for the upper middle class and an extra super duper bonus for the millionaire class. That's what the Republican Party has unanimously staked its future to.

GOP Cynicism Gone Wild

— By Kevin Drum

This is ridiculous. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that the new 1099 reporting requirements included in the healthcare reform bill should be repealed. The pain-in-the-ass factor is simply too high to justify forcing everyone to create the mountains of new paperwork it would require. The problem is that the new requirements essentially raise taxes on contractors and small businesses and this raises revenue. So if you want to repeal the requirements, you need to figure out how to make up the revenue, and Democrats and Republicans have been unable to agree on how to do this.
Yesterday, however, Sen. Max Baucus decided the hell with it. The amount of revenue is tiny (less than $2 billion per year), so why not just repeal the 1099 provision, lower everyone's taxes, and forget about paying for it? This is an eminently sensible position, since Republicans want the provision repealed and have repeatedly and unanimously taken the position that tax cuts don't need to be paid for.
So Baucus introduced an amendment to do the deed. And it failed because all but two Republicans voted against it.
Can anyone defend this in any kind of principled way? Republicans are eager to extend the Bush tax cuts on the rich without paying for them, and this will cost over $70 billion per year. Ditto for the estate tax. But the $2 billion 1099 tax? That's a no go. Gotta be paid for. If I didn't know better, I'd say that Republicans don't really want to repeal the 1099 provision at all. They want to keep it around so they have an issue to hammer Democrats with, even if it means voting not to relieve small businesses of a widely cursed new paperwork burden.
Even for a confirmed cynic, though, this is cynical beyond measure. Anybody got a more Republican-friendly explanation?