The Cato institute has reported that President Obama has imposed a tariff on Chinese made tires of 35%. This after he encouraged the G-20 members at their last meeting to not do anything to inhibit free trade!
One of the more interesting spectacles in all of this,would be watching President Obama explain his decision to impose tire duties on China at the G-20 meeting he is hosting in Pittsburgh in 12 days. Recall the president’s pledge (along with the other G-20 leaders) at the last G-20 meeting in London to avoid new protectionist measures.Source:Cato Institute

President Obama’s decision to impose a 35 percent tariff on imported tires from China was not an act of statesmanship. The White House admitted as much by announcing its decision at 10 p.m. on Friday evening in order to minimize news coverage.

A few union leaders are cheering, but in just about every other way our country is worse off. Among the biggest losers will be low-income American families. The tariffs apply to lower-end tires that sell for $50 or $60 each, compared to $200 for higher-end tires. As The Wall Street Journal reported this morning:

The low end of the market will feel the impact of the tariff most, as U.S. manufacturers, who joined the Chinese in opposing the tariffs, have said it isn’t profitable to produce inexpensive tires in domestic plants.Because Union wages and contributions to Union benefits make tire producers unable to produce cheap tires and still make a profit.

“I think within the next 60 days you’ll see some pretty significant price increases,” said Jim Mayfield, president of Del-Nat Tire Corp. of Memphis, Tenn., a large importer and distributor of Chinese tires. He estimates prices for “entry-level” tires could increase 20% to 30%.This will impact the lower middle class worker and the entry level wage earner whom Obama pledged to defend against big Business when he campaigned for the Presidency.

With his decision Friday, President Obama has revealed himself to be a friend of the status quo.He has already signaled that he would be a partner with the Unions before he was elected and with the Chrysler and General Motors debacle.

While he is doing the bidding of Unions, Obama is planning to stick it to the middle class. Those whom he promised during his campaign not to increase their taxes to pay for his welfare state programs.
Obama is raising taxes on households at the top while providing refundable giveaways to households at the bottom, such as the Making Work Pay tax credit and expansions in the child and earned income tax credits. But the top fifth of households already pay an effective federal tax rate of 26 percent, while the bottom fifth pay just 4 percent, on average. The tax code is already far too graduated, and Obama is exacerbating this inequity.
And remember he promised not to raise taxes on families with incomes of less than $250,000. But the president already broke that promise with a cigarette tax increase in February, and his cap-and-trade energy plan is effectively a large tax increase on all families. Health care reform might also include a significant tax increase on average families. Thus, it wouldn't be surprising if the Obama tax task force also decided to raise taxes on the middle class.

What has this to do with tariffs on Chinese tire imports. Well, if we do not want to get into a trade war because as surely as night follows day there will be more union requests for tariffs on other products that are made in Country's that do not have punitive regulations or high union wages to make products that are exported to the USA.
The Obama administration should rethink its devotion to tax increases as the solution to seemingly every policy issue. Tax increases make no sense in the competitive global economy, and they imply that there are no savings left to be made on the spending side of the federal budget.This is the thinking of the tax and spend Liberals to control the Congress and the White House for now, and that is why over one half million protesters gathered in Washington to send a message to Congress to stop the spending!!

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

Talk about regulation of people's lives. The Wall Street Journal reports that hidden within the over 1000 pages of HB 3200 is the biggest pay off and pay back to Unions for their over 500 million dollars that helped sweep Republicans out of Congress and elect Obama.

Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.

The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.

Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a "personal care attendants workforce advisory panel" that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created "community living assistance services and support (class)" reimbursement plan.

The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.

Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses.

Consider Kaiser Permanente, the giant, managed-care organization that has since 1997 proudly touted its labor-management "partnership" in scores of workplaces. Union officials play an essentially co-equal role in running many Kaiser facilities. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the Kaiser plan "a framework for what every health care delivery system should do" at a July 24 health-care forum outside of Washington, D.C.

The House bill has a $10 billion provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans. It also creates a lucrative professional-development grant program for health-care workers that effectively blackballs nonunion medical facilities from participation. The training funds in this program must be administered jointly with a labor organization—a scenario not unlike the U.S. Department of Labor's grants for construction apprenticeship programs, which have turned into a cash cow for construction industry union officials on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

There's more. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has suggested that the federal government could pay for health-care reform by taxing American workers' existing health-care benefits—but he would exempt union-negotiated health-care plans. Under Mr. Baucus's scheme, the government could impose costs of up to $20,000 per employee on nonunion businesses already struggling to afford health care plans.
Baucus is a Democrat from Montana( chairman of the Senate who has served in the Senate since 1978, and is the seventh longest-serving senator as of 2009.
It is no wonder the Union Lobbyists have got their hooks in him!

Mr. Baucus's proposal would give union officials another tool to pressure employers into turning over their employees to Big Labor. Rather than provide the lavish benefits required by Obamacare, employers could allow a union to come in and negotiate less costly benefits than would otherwise be required. Such plans could be continuously exempted.Source:The Wall Street Journal

U.S. Senator Max Baucus finally broken his silence regarding his personal position on including a public option in health care reform legislation. Monday night (8/17/09), in an unprecedented conference call to Montana Democratic central committee chairs, the powerful leader of the Senate Finance Committee told his strongest supporters that he supported a public option. While discussing the obstacles to getting a public option through the Senate, he assured his forty listeners, "I want a public option too!" source:Gossip Rocks.com

This means that any proposal from a Democrat will probably open the door to the so called Public Option. This is a semantic euphemism for Socialized Medicine! And the main beneficiaries will not be the patients but the Unions!

And while Americans are distracted by the Health Insurance rancor the Democratic controlled Senate committee strikes a blow to our defense capabilities, and allows the USA to share valuable technology with foreign buyers.

A Senate panel urged the Air Force on Thursday to start developing an export model of its F-22 Raptor, the most advanced U.S. fighter jet, even as it voted to end U.S. purchases.

Japan, Israel and Australia have shown interest in buying the supersonic, radar-evading F-22 Raptor, designed to destroy enemy air defenses in the first days of any conflict and clear the way for other missions.

Foreign sales were banned by a 1998 law aimed at protecting the "stealth" technology and other high-tech features said to have made the F-22 too good for money to buy.The bill, adopted 30 to 0 in 15 minutes without debate, largely backed program cuts sought by President Barack Obama. Overall, it provided $636.3 billion for defense in fiscal 2010, which starts October 1.

If enacted, the measure adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee would let the Defense Department prepare a modified F-22 that protects classified and sensitive information, technologies and U.S. war fighting capabilities.Source:

Both this bill and the Democrats Public Option health plan should be soundly opposed!

The leftist leaning Media tells the people that the TARP plan and Cash for Clunkers have been the impetus for the beginning of the economic recovery.
Conservatives like myself believe that the recovery is artificial, and we are in for a back slide in the stock market and the economy in particular.

If you analyse the effect that the TARP program has had, you will find that less than 15% of the hundreds of billions that were appropriated have actually been spent, and very little has gone to "shovel ready" plans!
The Clunker program is a temporary stimulus that is fast on car sales, but slow on payment to the auto dealers. Some dealers have as much as 45 million dollars outstanding.
Some well known economic experts, people who have analysed the clunker program, believe that once the program ceases there will be a dearth of sales as car buyers have tripled the pace of car purchases during the CFC program.

While Obama and his cohorts in Congress are "crowing" about the recovery they are responsible for. Many, including I say it is just the natural progression of past recessions taking place.All the depressions in the past have an inverse Bell curve pattern if you chart them. I believe we are still at the bottom and will remain there for another six months as there is very little encouraging news from the labor market.

We have a president who readily brags that he grew up and gravitated to radicals during his formative years, and it is possible that Obama is a Marxist/Leninist! After all he has so far appointed 44 Czars who are not responsible to anyone but him! Sounds tyrannical to me! And one is a Communist, The Green Czar!

Leninism holds that capitalism can only be overthrown by revolutionary means; that is, any attempts to reform capitalism from within, such as Fabianism and non-revolutionary forms of democratic socialism, are doomed to fail. I do not believe Obama is an advocate for revolution, but he apparently believes in redistribution of wealth and changing our free enterprise system to one where the government runs our lives from cradle to grave!

The first goal of a Leninist party is to educate the proletariat, so as to remove the various modes of false consciousness the bourgeois have instilled in them, instilled in order to make them more docile and easier to exploit economically, such as religion and nationalism. This going full force by Obama and his willing propagandists, the Media!
Once the proletariat has gained class consciousness the party will coordinate the proletariat's total might to overthrow the existing government, thus the proletariat will seize all political and economic power. Sounds like what happened to General Motors and the auto workers union!

Lastly the proletariat (thanks to their education by the party) will implement a dictatorship of the proletariat which would bring upon them socialism, the lower phase of communism. After this, the party would essentially dissolve as the entire proletariat is elevated to the level of revolutionaries.Source:Encyclopedia Britannica

Don't laugh! This is not as far fetched as you might think. If they get Obamacare and Cap and Tax passed, they will control most of our lives at home and in the work place! I believe that is the place where socialism resides!

It is my belief that what Obama wants to do to this country is based upon the "father" of Community Organizing, Saul Alinsky)1902-72), as this is where Obama spent his years before he entered politics. Community Organizing in Chicago, the birthplace of Alinsky.
Alinsky wrote a book called: "RULES FOR RADICALS"

In the first chapter, opening paragraph of the book Alinsky writes, "What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."

In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing in the prologue,

"There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.
Does this not sound like "a crisis should never be wasted", as uttered by Rahm Emanuel!!

This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families – more than seventy million people – whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default." Source:Wikapedia

This is why Obama and his associates are so attached with such organisations as SEIU, ACORN, and the Auto Workers Union to name just a few "at the ready" activists and enforcers!

Maybe I am just way off base, but something does not pass my smell test. Obama is cozy with Socialist like Chavez, and sends two billion dollars during the middle of a recession to Brazil for off shore drilling! But will not allow off shore drilling off our shores to help US get independence from oil producers that hate us and our economic system!

Americans better wake up to what the Obama administration is doing to our once strong and proud country. Uncle Sam can't run Medicaid/ Medicare/ Prescription Drug Benefit now, they are insolvent by 2017 according to a recent GAO report. I can't trust them in small things, how can I trust them in really big things?
Or maybe that is the plan? instead of reducing taxes and stopping spending, they will increase taxes, and keep spending until massive inflation occurs, and our dollar is worthless! Then we have the emergency they need to "CHANGE and SAVE" the USA with Socialism and total government control!!

It is a fact that president Obama said in 2003, when he was campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate, that he desires/wants a single payer health care system.
He said: "I don't think we're going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There's going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out."

Despite the president's statement, the lying Democrats keep telling the people that their plan will allow all people who have health insurance to keep it. What they do not tell you is that no insurance company can compete with a program that is priced so low that employers and individuals will be forced by economics to switch to the government plan.

Why can the government run a health plan that is actuarially unsound? Because they do not pay for the losses, the tax payer does! This has been happening for decades with the Social Security System and the Medicare and Medicaid plans. Not one of the three is actuarially sound or solvent!!
Looking at the costs of Medicare, Medicare is not controlling costs. Rather, it is allowing costs to grow faster than costs for private insurance, but balancing this by shifting an increasing share of those costs onto other payers, including the (seniors)beneficiaries themselves!

Despite the claims of "public plan" proponents, the available evidence from the nation's largest and oldest public plan does not indicate that a new or expanded public plan modeled on Medicare could provide Americans with health care that is comparable to that offered by existing private plans, much less at a lower cost.

The rationale for creating a new public program modeled on Medicare is based on four erroneous beliefs: 1. that Medicare, compared to private-sector health plans, provides comparable access to health care at costs that grow more slowly than those of the private sector; 2. that Medicare has lower administrative costs than private insurance; 3. that Medicare uses superior bargaining power to reduce health care costs without harm to patients; and 4. that public health plans are more innovative, whereas private health plans only follow the government's lead.

All of these assertions are verifiable false. Contrary to the claims of public plan advocates, and the president!

Total per-beneficiary health care costs are growing faster for Medicare patients than for private insurance patients. Medicare's per-beneficiary patient care costs appear to grow more slowly than costs in the private sector only if one ignores the fact that Medicare is paying a rapidly shrinking share of its beneficiaries' total health care costs. Total per-beneficiary patient care costs for Medicare patients are growing faster than total costs for patients with private insurance. However, spending by the Medicare program is growing more slowly than private insurance because much of the growth in health care costs for Medicare beneficiaries is offset by increased out-of-pocket spending by beneficiaries and other sources of private-sector funding.

Medicare's per-beneficiary administrative costs are substantially higher than the administrative costs of private health plans. The illusion that Medicare's administrative costs are lower comes from expressing administrative costs as a percentage of total costs, including patient care. Medicare's average patient care costs are naturally higher because its beneficiaries are by definition elderly, disabled, or end-stage renal disease patients, so its per-person administrative costs are spread over a larger base of health care costs.

Medicare has no "bargaining power." To the extent that the prices that Medicare pays health care providers are lower than prices paid by private health plans, it is because of the government's regulatory power, not because it reduces the actual costs of providing care or has superior bargaining power. Furthermore, lobbyists for physicians have persuaded Congress in each of the past seven years to intervene to block scheduled reductions in the prices that Medicare pays for physician services--and in six of those seven years to replace the reduction with an increase. This experience suggests that Medicare does not in fact have any bargaining power that would enable it to lower prices further, or even to maintain prices at current levels.

Historically, public plans have more often been followers, not leaders, in health care delivery innovation. It is private-sector organizations that have introduced new quality-improvement methods and new customer services, as well as disease management and coverage of preventive care.

A public health care plan would not improve the current health care situation and would likely make matters worse. Far from saving enough to cover the uninsured, it would increase the cost of covering even the presently insured at the current standard of care. A public plan could reduce overall spending only at the cost of substantial harm to patients by rationing or denial of care.

Why do the Democrats and their sycophants like AARP not want these facts known to the "mob" that is attending their propaganda sessions that they call Town Hall meetings?
As the Heritage Foundation's Robert A. Book states in his recent article: "by its nature, any public plan would be driven by congressional interventions, bureaucratic processes, and lobbying rather than by incentives to innovate in the financing and delivery of quality, efficient health care. This same phenomenon was evident with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "public plan" mortgage companies that were established to compete with private lenders to "keep them honest" and increase levels of home ownership. Driven by congressional interventions, an implicit government guarantee, and lending policies at odds with economic reality, these public mortgage companies collapsed and threw the entire financial system into chaos. A "Freddie Doc" would eventually produce similarly disastrous results".Source:Heritage Foundation

There is a good reason why the "goons" of SEIU and ACORN have shown up at meetings about health Care reform. The Union movement has invested heavily in the passage of Obama Care.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi received union contributions that totaled the second-largest amount of labor PAC cash, getting $144,000. The California Democrat was followed by another, Rep. George Miller, the Education and Labor chairman, who received $119,540. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was next. His campaign committee collected $115,500.
Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a former FEC chairman, said it is not surprising that labor leads the pack in giving this year.

“The unions have an agenda in this Congress, and they are trying to move legislation,” Potter said. He added that unions, which give overwhelmingly to Democrats, also may be trying early in the election cycle to shore up the majority party in Congress, particularly its vulnerable members.

Speaking out for what you believe and then you are called a Nazi or a stooge for the Insurance Industry, and be threatened and possibly assaulted by union bullies is something out of the history of tyrants!

Democrats apparently only believe in freedom of speech when you agree with them. They are as intolerant as the Bolshevist thugs who ruled Russia for over 60 years.

Silence is acceptance! Speak out loudly and often. We want our country back! Stop National Health care! Stop Cap and Trade!
Or live with the dire consequences!!

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

The best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits.

But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.

With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.Just like all taxes they will begin taxing only those earning over 100K, but when they admit the tax reciepts will not bring in enough money. They will report the crisis as a threat to the health plan now in force, and tax all wage earners!

Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts.
The key words are " not yet determined". They are asking us to buy a "pig in a Polk"!

But those union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would not be subjected to the tax, according to proposals under discussion. Another pay off to the Union movement. Are Americans ready to accept this pay off to unions?

Union workers enjoy some of the most extensive and costliest health benefits, and union officials complained their members would be unfairly burdened by a health care tax because their contracts cannot be changed quickly enough to avoid it. This is an absurd claim made by the group that was necessary in the days of Samuel Gompers, but has made the Auto Industry and many others non-competative due to their absured salary and bnefit demands.This is no more or no less than a payoff for poiltical support in the last two elections!

Union members represent one of the biggest and most powerful Democratic constituencies and their support of any health care reform proposal is viewed as essential to getting a bill passed in Congress.Who is the Congress of the United States responsible to the general population, or the Unions?

Baucus has proposed the tax threshold on health care benefits be set higher than the cost of policies available to federal employees and he has proposed exempting until 2013 those plans negotiated as part of union contracts.

“It’s a means of making sure that unions are foursquare behind any reform bill that comes out,” said Henry Aaron, a health care policy expert at Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

I believe the Baucus proposal to exempt unions from a health care benefits tax ,could be used to lure into unions employees who are anxious to avoid the benefits tax.Another unintended perk for a select group that is not available to the general population.

President-elect Obama during his campaign pledged to build a health care system in which Americans can be assured of access to affordable health insurance. He guaranteed Americans who already have insurance that nothing would change except that their coverage would be less expensive. He pointed to the health system that Members of Congress have as your model for expanding coverage. And he agreed that choice of doctor and care is a basic principle. These laudable themes struck a chord with Americans.But it appears to be just another lie that Obama is telling to the guilable American public.

Even worse than congressionally mandated benefits would be mandatory coverage designed by the powerful Federal Health Board proposed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle (D-SD). Daschle envisions a remote board of "experts," perhaps modeled on the Federal Reserve Board. This board, he says, would be "insulated from politics. Congress and the White House would relinquish some of their health-policy decisions to it." Shielded from public opinion and from representative government, it would have "teeth," says Daschle, potentially deciding such things as premiums and appropriate services, and "all federal programs would have to abide by [its recommendations]." He also imagines that the board would "link the tax exclusion for health insurance to insurance that complies with the Board's recommendations."

Tom Daschle's Federal Health Board would have enormous power over medical decisions affecting every American. This is unacceptable, and would break Obama's pledge to give Americans choice. This scheme should be rejected!!
Source: Thomas Sowell

IF YOU SPEND 50 MILLION DOLLARS TO GET DEMOCRATS ELECTED TO THE SENATE AND THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. It is expected that you will get something in return, and the Union movement is reaping rewards in spades.
First there was this: President Obama, who campaigned on a promise of greater disclosure and transparency, has taken a step in the opposite direction. Under his administration, the Department of Labor has announced it will delay and review implementing a requirement from the Bush Administration that union managers and employees fully disclose how union dues are managed.

This foot-dragging by the Obama Administration — which could lead to a gutting of key disclosure regulations affecting labor unions.— This is the second misstep by the new president in the area of labor. The first was his embracing the controversial and blatantly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. This act would strip union members of their right to a secret ballot.

The great irony is that, in both cases, Obama and his labor supporters would argue that these policies protect union workers. In fact, they work against the rights of union members by extending preferential treatment to labor unions' managers, top-level officials and staff employees.

Then there was the outright gift of 55% of the ownership of the new Chrysler to the Auto workers union retiree health-care trust fund. Fiat the supposed new owner gets 20%, with the rest of the company staying in the government’s hands.

And on the heels of this payback the new GM(aka government motors),
The United Auto Workers get GM stock for at least half the $20 billion the company owes to a union-run trust that will assume retiree health care expenses starting next year.

Combined, the union and government own 89 percent of the century-old automaker, which was bleeding red ink and was saddled with more than $62 billion in debt.

Now the ultimate payback and insult to ll taxpayers who are not involved in either government or unions, and our numbers are diminishing as the days Obama is in the Oval Office, is the law being proposed by senator Max Baucus of Montana.

Liberals believe the best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits. And they will have a lot of help from two left-wing heavyweights joining the HCAN parade: the corruption-plagued SEIU (which has battled numerous(16) embezzlement scandals among its chapters across the country while crusading for consumer and patients' rights) and Obama's old chums at fraud-riddled ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

These union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax!
HCAN( Health Care for America Now)has a $40 million budget, with $10 million pitched in by The Atlantic Philanthropies, a Bermuda-based organization fronted by Soros acolyte Gara LaMarche. Also in the money mix: famous Democratic donors Herb and Marion Sandler, the left-wing moguls who made billions selling subprime mortgages and helped Soros fund his vast network of left-wing activist satellites. By their side is billionaire Peter Lewis of Progressive Insurance, whose "Progressive Future" youth group has dispatched clueless volunteers armed with clipboards and literature bashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to scare up support for Obamacare.
Source: Michelle Malkin


With cost estimates already as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has proposed paying for the bill in part by taxing health care benefits for workers who earn more than $100,000, or $200,000 for married couples, according to those familiar with the discussions.

Baucus is also weighing a tax based on the value of health care benefits that exceed a yet-to-be determined cap. A tax on benefits that exceed the cap by a mere $3,000 could amount to $750 in taxes annually for a worker who earns as little as $34,000, say experts.

But those union members serving under collective bargaining agreements would not be subjected to the tax, according to proposals under discussion.

Union workers enjoy some of the most extensive and costliest health benefits, and union officials complained their members would be unfairly burdened by a health care tax because their contracts cannot be changed quickly enough to avoid it.

Union members also represent one of the biggest and most powerful Democratic constituencies and their support of any health care reform proposal is viewed as essential to getting a bill passed in Congress.Big money from unions such as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, as well as the Internet-fueled MoveOn have put the full force of their money behind the push for socialized medicine.

Senator Baucus has proposed the tax threshold on health care benefits be set higher than the cost of policies available to federal employees and he has proposed exempting until 2013 those plans negotiated as part of union contracts.

“It’s a means of making sure that unions are foursquare behind any reform bill that comes out,” said Henry Aaron, a health care policy expert at Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Critics of the Baucus proposal to exempt unions from a health care benefits tax said the exclusion could be used to lure into unions employees who are anxious to avoid the benefits tax.

.Is it any wonder that Unions are pushing hard for a government health plan. The union bosses can transfer their liability for health insurance for retirees and current employees from fee for service plans to a socialized plan that you and I will be responsible to pay for!
IS THIS HE CHANGE YOU VOTED FOR?

Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan

The Media and the Democrat and RINO cabal that is trying to award poor management practices with you hard earned tax dollars is telling you it is all about saving jobs. But I do not believe it!
That's right America: It's your problem! Just like the banks and insurance companies and everybody else we've been bailing out because they're "too big to let fail."
After the roughly $2 trillion already committed to stemming the credit crisis, an additional $25 billion in public money for the automakers (on top of the $25 billion loan program created by Congress in September to help them develop more fuel-efficient vehicles) seems almost trivial. THE MEDIA SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN THIS!

Not only is it morally wrong to reward unprofitable business practices, it's fundamentally wrong and anti-capitalistic.
It wasn't about the jobs when the automakers sent so much of their manufacturing overseas; that was about their bottom line.
It wasn't about the jobs when they built, and then abandoned the project, the EV-1 electric car program. It would not sell anyways because the cost to the consumer is estimated as prohibitive
It wasn't about the jobs when they made decades of vehicles consumers shunned in favor of better products from foreign manufacturers.
It's only about the jobs when it costs them. For over 50 years, the Big Three, with the aid of the UAW, have fought anything that was thought good for the car buyer.

On 11/5/08 the UAW came to Washington to ask for a government Bridge loan to help their Health Trust. The Detroit News reported that the Big 3,and UAW asked for health trust help.
The Big Three and the United Auto Workers were pressing the case for low-cost government loans to help automakers make required payments to trust funds to oversee hourly retiree health care starting in 2010.
The need for congressional support for the health care funding isn't their most immediate concern, but it's looming. The automakers are asking Congress for as much as $25 billion in "bridge financing" to help with their liquidity crisis, but that money also could be used for funding the health care trust.
This request was separate from the $25 billion already approved for low-cost loans for retooling plants to build more fuel-efficient cars, when it returns to work this month.
The topic of the health-care payments was addressed during an hour-long meeting of House Democrats convened by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday.
In total, Detroit's Big Three automakers would have made nearly $60 billion in payments to bankroll three trust funds to pay for hourly retiree health care. All union members who apparently supported Obama in the past election.

The argument that has driven this slow moving economic "iceberg" to the point where the House has passed a "bail out" bill that President Bush has said he would sign is
the warning by legislative director Alan Reuther, who said the financial ability of automakers to make the payments into the trust fund in 2010 is a concern, and one of the issues that should be addressed by Congress.
"If the federal government does not provide assistance to the Detroit-based auto companies to enable them to survive the economic downturn, hundreds of thousands of jobs at the auto companies and suppliers will be threatened," UAW President Ron Gettelfinger wrote in an Oct. 27 letter to lawmakers. "The health care and pension benefits for the retirees and their families will be placed in jeopardy." He noted that the government could be forced to assume a large increase in health care and retiree costs if the Big Three collapsed.
Detroit's Big Three automakers spent $8.9 billion on health care in 2007, compared with a record $11 billion in 2005.
Automakers have said they think Congress should consider all available options to assist automakers.
Wouldn't it be nice if the Congress considered the taxpaying public a little more before they bail out an industry that is destined to to be bankrupt without "chucking" their bloated Union benefit structure, and start making cars that the consumer wants, not cars that the "Eco-freaks" demand!

As an interesting side note. The President elect spent less than two minutes in today's press conference denying he had any contact with indicted and arrested Governor Blagojevich regarding the filling of his Senate seat. He spent most of his time introducing ex-Senator Tom Daschel and Gene Lambert as his team to craft a National Health Plan. Most notable was when asked how can we afford National Health
Insurance? His simplistic non-response was: "how can we afford not to do it!" Not unlike the non-detailed plans for his CHANGE during the campaign!

Our only hope is that true Republican that believe in fiscal responsibility will hold the line. The latest news from the AP is that Republicans are challenging lame-duck President George W. Bush on the proposal, arguing that any support for the domestic auto industry should carry significant concessions from autoworkers and creditors and reject tougher environmental rules imposed by House Democrats.

There were 170 Congressmen and women who voted against the 14 billion dollar loan Wednesday,so I hope the Republicans,in the Senate, do not give into the hysteria of severe job loss that is being used to sell this loan. It will not save jobs, but it will delay their demise until Obama can take over the Oval Office and begin the Socialization of the Republic that once was the USA.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Teddy Roosevelt

THERE IS NO GOOD REASON WHY THE AMERICAN TAXPAYER SHOULD HAVE TO BEAR THE BURDEN OF THE BAIL-OUT OF THE AUTO WORKERS UNION IN Michigan!
The Democrats like "lying Harry Reid" would like you to think that the bail out is to save an industry, and in a way it is partially that, but the main reason Reid, Pelosi and the Congressional Democrats are pushing so hard for the billions for the Auto industry salvage. Is to save the Union that helped delivered the House, Senate and White House to the Democrats on Novemeber 4th.

If they get away with this rip-off. They will follow with a long list of bail outs for other industrial Unions that helped get the big prize last time we voted.

Not many people realize the exorbitant wages that Union Auto workers get to make a product that has built in obsolescence.

Is it right to tax the average worker making $28.50 to bailout workers whose labor cost is over $73 an hour?” Perry asked.

He explained that in 2006, widely available industry and Labor Department statistics placed the average labor cost for UAW-represented workers at the former DaimlerChrysler at $75.86 per hour. For Ford it was $70.51, he said, and for General Motors it was $73.26.

“That includes the hourly pay, plus the benefits they’re receiving and all the other costs to General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, including legacy costs – retirement costs, pensions, and so on – so it’s looking at the total labor costs per hour worked for workers,” Perry said.

For U.S. workers at Toyota, however, the per hour labor cost is around $47.60, around $43 for Honda and around $42 for Nissan, Perry added, for an average of around $44.

“So we’re looking at somewhere around a $29 per hour pay gap between the Big Three and the foreign transplants that are producing cars in the United States,” Perry, chairman of the economics department, told CNSNews.com. Source:CNS News.com

If you annualized Chrysler’s labor cost of $75.86 an hour per worker over a 35-hour week, for 50-weeks a year, the yearly compensation comes in at almost $133,000 per worker per year.

“The question is, where do you stop? Would this just be a down payment on a continuing bailout that they would need in the future?” he asked.

“Once we’re in for $25 billion, or $50 billion, it’s going to be a lot easier for them to ask for more money later,” If we want this particular industry to be competitive and survive for the next decade or more, they really have to get their labor costs in line with reality and the global marketplace.
It is time for the production to shift towards companies that have lower labor costs; that are more efficient and more productive. Even if that wasn’t production that took place in Michigan by United Auto Workers, it would still be production that would take place somewhere in the U.S. economy. So we would still have a large number of jobs tied to the auto industry.

Historically, one of the strengths of the U.S. economy has been its willingness to let inefficient firms fail and redeploy those resources – money, but also people – to new and potentially more successful businesses. I think that has always been one of the distinctive strengths of the U.S. economy. Write, call, email or telegraph your Congress person to vote no on this political pay off!