I probably should have weighed in on this issue a few weeks back, but the looming bipartisan repeal of Obamacare’s 1099 reporting requirement is nothing for Obamacare’s opponents to cheer.
The 1099 provision refers to the justly reviled clause in Obamacare (section 9006) that compels any business spending at least $600 on a supplier to issue a 1099 to that supplier. So, if my consulting business buys $600 worth of office supplies from Staples, I’m supposed to issue Staples a 1099!
It’s supposed to raise some tax revenue by giving the IRS more accurate information about business transactions, but it’s an easy target for a “mini-repeal” of an obviously ridiculous provision of Obamacare.
The House passed a short bill to repeal the reporting requirement on March 3 (with every Republican and 76 Democrats voting in favor), and the Senate has been tossing it around for a few days now. Although the Senate appears to want to move it to the president’s desk, certain senators have been trying to add unrelated amendments to it, so it hasn’t passed yet.
Nor should it. The 1099 reporting requirement kicks in at the beginning of 2012, just when the thousand-plus Obamacare waivers are expiring and their beneficiaries will be pleading for their renewal. The bureaucratic hassles of Obamacare will be back on the front pages. Although a nuisance, the 1099 reporting requirement will be the most obvious “cost” of Obamacare to millions of small businesses and sole proprietors as we go into the next campaign season.
Taking this off the table risks losing that community’s commitment to the complete defeat of Obamacare. Repealing the 1099 reporting requirement would be a Pyrrhic victory in the struggle against Obamacare — exactly the type of bipartisanship we don’t need.
You know.. not a bad point!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseActually, it is rather a terrible point. If it is possible to repeal this absurd provision now, then it must be repealed.
Declining to pursue repeal -- again, if it is genuinely possible, and it seems it is -- would mean making a decision to intentionally waste real people's real resources in the hope of hypothetical political gain.
Subjecting people to unnecessary expense and harassment to manipulate them politically is not something conservatives are supposed to support.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStrategically, Mr. Graham is spot on and while Bridey's heart is in the right place, his approach would squander long-term victory for a short-term Pyrrhic triumph. The American public has a notoriously short attention span: witness the boost in the polls that President's have after their State of the Union; witness the post hoc ergo prompter hoc association of a drop in the unemployment rate with "success" of the President's economic program; etc. You must provide the philistines with raw meat and the 1099 program is as raw and protein-rich as it gets: it focuses the mind of millions of Americans on how Obamacare is screwing ordinary Americans and it creates an act of political metonymy, whereby the abstraction that is Obamacare and which is opposed only by those who think philosophically is replaced by the concretization of and the daily hassles created by a disastrous 1099 program that is opposed and hated by millions who see it as Obamacare itself. Graham (or I!) ought to be running the Republicans' campaigns and orchestrating their strategy, not those who, notwithstanding their best intent, are emasculating our political arsenal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRight on, Bridey. This is exactly the kind of political game that makes so many of us sick. Step out of the Beltway, Mr. Graham - these are real people with real businesses in a tough economy, not political poker chips.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis would be a good point, except that we are not to "do evil that good may come."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt will simply result in the normalization of the Black Market where everyone, everyone, including Government officials does as much business under the table as possible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDunsworth and Bridey have it right. Let's follow Mr. Graham's advice to its logical conclusion and ask: should the Republican house pass a new Obamacare tax increase of say $500 billion in order to make the health care law so onerous that everyone will turn against it?
As Dunsworth says keep our focus on improving our lot in life.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Let me be clear, I am always for improving our health care system, and I don't care if it's a Repulican idea or a Democrat idea. That is why I support repeal of the 1099 reporting requirement. Make no mistake, with this bad part of the reform bill now out of the way, uh, it's now time to move forward with other bipartisan plans to save 'Merica!"
-Barry Obama campaign trail summer 2011
David Brooks, Lindsey Graham, and other intelligentsia on "the Right" fall down on the spot from tingling legs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSays FreezeDriedNews:
"You must provide the philistines with raw meat and the 1099 program is as raw and protein-rich as it gets: it focuses the mind of millions of Americans on how Obamacare is screwing ordinary Americans."
Yes, the point was clear when Mr. Graham made it. I mean, it's not very complicated, is it?
Since we're repeating ourselves, let me indulge: If this 1099 provision is the disaster it appears it's going to be, people will lose their jobs and businesses and homes, and many will likely end up being terrorized by the IRS.
To intentionally inflict real misery for the sake of hypothetical gain is a notion our friends on the left are fond of, but it's not supposed to be the way conservatives operate. And it's not terribly difficult for even "ordinary Americans" to understand the concept of "They had a chance to stop this, and they didn't."
But of course "It's for their own good" can be used to rationalize any number of bad ideas, can't it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOther than the fact that you have millions of small businesses having to "ramp up" for the new 1099 requirements starting well BEFORE next January 2012, and they must start keeping track of it all on the FIRST DAY of 2012 or else have a mess on their hands at the end of the year... all while they wait to hear if it's been repealed or not. Then it gets repealed in, say, March 2012, and all those businesses have had to pay the bookkeeper or accountant for all the extra preparation & tracking of vendor work that's now not needed.
Great for accountants. Not so great for small businesses.
I think perhaps Mr. Graham has never worked in the real world. Just repeal it already.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKeep the tax increases in place. Those are the easiest to repeal. Repeal all but the tax increases, this can be done with reconciliation.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMatty has it right. This article shows no understanding of how complicated it is to change an accounting system to accommodate 1099s on goods as well as services. Although small businesses and the self-employed have been squawking loudly about this requirement, every business will need to comply and train their sales clerks. If I go to BestBuy and buy an $800 computer, how will BestBuy know to send me a 1099 unless it is clarified at point of purchase that this is for a business, not me personally?
Repeal this requirement now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's right Mr Graham. Cause us - the people actually powering this economy right now - to have to take on a huge unnecessary burden solely for political gain.
You're just another nail in the coffin, aren't you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLook, a squirrel!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLet us not, as we debate the best tactics for delivering the Republic from this evil, forget that the WHOLE ENCHILADA -- including the 1099 requirement -- was foisted on America by the crazy, leftist, we-have-to-pass-it-so-you-can-find-out-what's-in-it idiots on the other side of the aisle. It's all well and good to debate tactics and strategy, up until the point that it shifts focus from the perfidy and ridiculousness of the Democratic Party.
This is a terrible idea, if the 1009 requirement is not repealed after it becoming clear that it is bad for business, large and small, the proponents of Obamacare will claim it as a victory and it will be concluded and heralded by the adminsitration and the mainstream press that Americans are finally coming around to accepting this atrocious law, and it will be harder to repeal as a whole. The democrats will make spin it out of control.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJudging by his comments, I would suspect that Mr. Graham has never run a small business, but has rather spent most of his time in either academia or non-profit think tanks.
The onus of the 1099 burden would have caused an unbelieveable accounting nightmare for small-businesses. Moreover, the potential liabiity for lax or incorrect reporting is simply to great a risk to bear simply for future "policy" considerations. As a small business owner, I am quite glad this burden has been lifted...and lifted now.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThose who would actually have to deal with these 1099 requirements should just suck it up for the years it'll take to get Obamacare repealed?
No. Stop any of the stupid whenever the opportunity presents itself. There's plenty of stupid left in Obamacare to keep us going until a full repeal is possible.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReading these comments helps me to understand why it's so impossible to cut back government, why the trendline is inexorably upward, and why the GOP always loses to the Democrats on policy in the long run.
Lenin called businessmen who accommodated socialism "useful idiots," and for good reason. I'm a small businessman myself, but if undergoing a little extra pain for a year or so will result in much less pain (implementation of the rest of Obamacare) later, I'm willing to suck it up.
Most of the ill effects of Obamacare will be sub rosa or not obvious to most of the population. Private insurance will gradually drop away, and people will gradually move into government care. Once they get accustomed to free care (but rotten service), it will be virtually impossible to reverse.
Obamacare is like a pot of water slowly heating up, and the American people are an unsuspecting frog sitting in that pot. Unless they get scalded early enough to jump out before it's too late, Obamacare will slowly boil them alive.
Stripping away the most obviously hurtful provisions now will only make the rest of the awful package more palatable. We're actually doing Obama a favor by getting rid of the 1099 provision.
Reading these comments makes me realize why the public unions always win. They are willing to go to the ramparts for as long as it takes to get their way. We can't even put up with an extra reporting requirement for a year or two to ensure a bigger victory in the future over an evil far worse than the one we're eliminating, one that will destroy our economy for decades to come.
And to the point that "we are not to do evil that good may come." I say there is a big difference between not repealing something bad in order to destroy a much greater evil, and passing a new onerous requirement (as some have ridiculously analogized this to) to make a bad bill worse. A child can tell the logical distinction between the two courses of action (or inaction, in the first case).
Politics is a public relations war first and foremost. Why do you think Democrats resisted Republican efforts to make incremental improvements to the healthcare system for so many years?
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