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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2010-03-28

Wow! Who Could Have Seen This Coming? 

The immediate aftermath of ObamaCare passing:

:AT&T is needing to add a one-time $1 BILLION expense to its first quarter ledgers
:Deere and CO is similarly adding a $150 million expense
:Caterpillar will have at least $100 mil more in expenses in the first year alone
:Medtronic may be forced to lay of 1000s of workers
:Verizon will likely have to cut healthcare benefits for its employees

Now, let's see . . . what are the choices for these companies? Hmmm . . .such a quandary. Do I reduce expenses by cutting benefits? Or do I simply roll back the number of people I employ? Hmmm . . . maybe I can just raise the prices on all my services to make up for it! Yeah! That's the ticket!

Of course, the long-range impact is starting to look grimmer. Remember how important the Congressional Budget Office was last week? Well this is a new week, and important stuff like this just slips through every once in a while:

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.

Now, of course, none of this is going to get into the mainstream consciousness without a fight:

Henry Waxman not only orders the CEOs of AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere & Co, and Verizon to testify before the Energy and Commerce Committee, but also to produce internal analyses and emails related to their statements. They don't expressly subpoena the CEOs . . .

The Dems sent these letters to the Republicans on the committee after 6pm tonight with no advance notice or prior cooperation.

I wonder, based on this, which is more likely: Henry Waxman summons the director of the President's Office of Management and Budget to the Hill to ask why his/her projections were so far off and exactly what he plans to do about it, or Henry Waxman summons the director of the Congressional Budget Office to the Hill to chastise him/her for doing this analysis, doing it wrong, and then letting the information go public?

I've said for years that the Democrats are much better at wielding power than Republicans are. They used every trick in the book to get their Health Care, they'll use every trick to get reelected, the ram immigration "reform" down our throats without a blink of an eye, and then they'll find some way to shepherd Cap 'n Trade through the Congressional morass. They have this one shot at this, and they know it, so grab your hats and hold on to something: it's going to be a long, bumpy ride until November.
Posted by: Michael / 3/28/2010 01:57:00 AM

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