(photo: Andrea Gage/aflcio2008)
With Obama set to unveil the pre-Scott Brown health care compromise for next week’s bipartisan lovefest, the already fragile deal is falling apart. Fresh off a stinging slap to the face in which Obama refused to appoint Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, labor unions are apparently backing out of the deal on the excise tax on high-cost health care plans.
An agreement to tax high-cost, employer-sponsored health insurance plans, announced with fanfare by the White House and labor unions last month, is losing support from labor leaders, who say the proposal is too high a price to pay for the limited health care package they expect to emerge from Congress. […]
But labor leaders have backed away from the proposal in the wake of the special Senate election in Massachusetts.
“I do not believe there will be an excise tax enacted,” said Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America. “It appears that the administration and Congress will be taking a much more modest approach to health care reform. The cost and value of such reform would not justify using an excise tax.”
The AFL-CIO and allied members of Congress are backing away from the excise tax because they say it’s not popular with voters, as evidenced by Scott Brown’s election. The labor federation’s polling, in addition to finding that union members voted for Brown over Coakley, found the excise tax to be an unpopular idea that sent more voters to Brown.
But as a practical matter, labor leaders said, the excise tax was killed by the election in Massachusetts, where the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy.
“Fully 42 percent of voters believed the health care bill would tax employer health benefits, and these voters supported Brown by two to one,” Mr. Podhorzer said.
This is all very convenient, actually. The AFL-CIO has at an opportune moment thrown a wrench into Obama’s main priority right after they got screwed. Ten bucks says that these concerns would go away if he appointed Craig Becker to the NLRB during this week’s recess. If not, expect labor to continue to abandon the excise tax deal and kiss health care reform goodbye.
[Ed. Note: As Jon points out, it would behoove all parties to keep the insurance excise tax out of the legislation; there are many better ways to fund this reform.]
