Just over a year ago on February 12, Barack Obama spoke to Caterpillar employees at the plant in East Peoria, Illinois, and said the following:
“So what’s happening at this company tells us a larger story about what’s happening with our nation’s economy — because, in many ways, you can measure America’s bottom line by looking at Caterpillar’s bottom line.”
In that address, Obama provided us with a barometer, a measure, a way to know whether legislation is good or bad in microcosm.
And judging by Obama’s VERY OWN STANDARD, his health care legislation is absolutely terrible:
John Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon Announce Rise in Health-Care Costs After Obamacare Passage
BY Mary Katharine Ham
March 25, 2010 10:02 AMIf Verizon weren’t in the mix, I’d be tempted to say this was a rural dudes with heavy machinery tax.
Farm equipment maker Deere & Co (DE.N) expects after-tax expenses to rise by $150 million this year as a result of the healthcare reform law President Barack Obama signed this week.
Most of the higher expense will come in Deere’s second quarter, the company said on Thursday. The expense was not included in the company’s earlier 2010 forecast, which called for net income of about $1.3 billion.
Earlier this week, Caterpillar announced it would take a $100 million hit:
The charge is expected to be a one-time cost, but Caterpillar has argued that higher taxes and other potential cost increases related to insurance coverage mandates in the legislation will hinder the company’s recovery this year after a 75% plunge in income during 2009.
“From our point of view, a tax increase like this cannot come at a worse time,” said Jim Dugan, a Caterpillar spokesman.
Although the tax doesn’t take effect until 2011, the company said it is required to recognize the impact in the period in which the law was signed. Industry analysts estimated the charge at about 13 cents a share.
That ought to do wonders for the construction sector.
The National Review got its hands on an e-mail from Verizon to employees:
…due to the varying effective dates included in the legislation, we expect that Verizon’s costs will increase in the short-term. These cost increases are primarily driven by two provisions.
The first is a provision that affects the Medicare Part D subsidy for prescription drug coverage. Because Verizon offers retiree prescription drug coverage today, the government provides a 28 percent subsidy to help offset the financial burden of offering that coverage. The subsidy was intended to help employers continue to offer prescription drug coverage for retirees so that these retirees would not have to use the Government Medicare Part D program. However, changes affecting the Part D subsidy will make it less valuable to employers, like Verizon, and as a result, may have significant implications for both retirees and employers.
Let’s take a closer look at Caterpillar and what they say about ObamaCare, since Obama himself said what affected Caterpillar would affect the country as a whole:
Dow Jones Newswires | Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would increase the company’s health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.
In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.” Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.
The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.
“We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,” said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. “We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.”
Business executives have long complained that the options offered for covering 32 million uninsured Americans would result in higher insurance costs for those employers that already provide coverage. Opponents have stepped up their attacks in recent days as the House moves closer toward a vote on the Senate version of the health-care legislation.
A letter Thursday to President Barack Obama and members of Congress signed by more than 130 economists predicted the legislation would discourage companies from hiring more workers and would cause reduced hours and wages for those already employed.
Caterpillar noted that the company supports efforts to increase the quality and the value of health care for patients as well as lower costs for employer-sponsored insurance coverage.
“Unfortunately, neither the current legislation in the House and Senate, nor the president’s proposal, meets these goals,” the letter said.
It’s bad. It’s really, really bad. ObamaCare won’t create jobs. It will kill them.
Obama said it himself: “You can measure America’s bottom line by looking at Caterpillar’s bottom line.” And thanks to ObamaCare, Caterpillar’s bottom line pretty much stinks on ice. Along with many other companies such as John Deere and Verizon.
That’s why we have an impending reality of hundreds of thousands of jobs lost due to ObamaDeath:
In a study prepared for the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, the Beacon Hill Institute found that the current proposal before Congress to reform the nation’s health care system will destroy up to 700,000 jobs over a ten-year period. The study uses a more realistic baseline from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to refute the claim made by the Center for American Progress that PPACA will create up to 400,000 jobs per year over the coming decade.
Rep. John Dingell, known as “the dean of the House” given the fact that his tenure in the House of Representatives extends to 1955, when he inherited the seat from his father, gave us the REAL reason for ObamaCare:
“The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people”
It certainly wasn’t to build a strong economy or create jobs. Businesses are going to be too busy ducking and covering and paying taxes and complying with costly new regulations to worry about expanding. And every new hire will be a fiscal millstone around the necks of employers who will have to pay increasingly high taxes on every employee to satisfy ObamaCare.
The 159 new federal agencies that will be created, and the 16,500 IRS agents who will be poking into your lives to ensure compliance with those 159 agencies, don’t come cheap.
It’s becoming apparent that the “death panels” are for businesses every bit as much as they will ultimately be for senior citizens who will die due to medical neglect when their health care resources get rationed.
Start Thinking Right 