With Scott Brownโs victory still echoing throughout the blogosphere, itโs easy to forget that, as Yogi Berra so famously noted, โit ainโt over til itโs over.โ Speaker Pelosi and the White House arenโt conceding anything, and still seem determined to ram the Senate bill through Congress at all costs.
So if they are determined to pass a bad bill, we need to keep reminding people just how bad the bill is. Take the recent union carve-out from the Cadillac Tax. As my colleague Steve Malanga points out in his Real Clear Markets piece today, this turns health reform into a โconspiracy against taxpayers.โ
The health care deal, then, represents an unprecedented victory for public sector unions, and the deal shows where the next front in the growing battle between taxpayers and those who devour tax revenues will be fought. The burden these outsized public worker salaries and benefits costs have placed on government budgets everywhere has sparked a crisis and a search for new revenues. By exempting public employees from a significant revenue raiser, Washington has pointed the way. Expect more creative deals at the state and local level where government workers will be relieved of paying new taxes or otherwise have their tax obligations subsidized.
These โunion rulesโ are just a small taste of windfall of political patronage that will come from the Democratโs legislation โ and the eternal lobbying frenzy that will follow, distorting health-care markets even more than they already are.
Brownโs win, however, is encouraging because it shows that if Obamacare isnโt popular in Massachusetts, it isnโt likely to be very popular anywhere else. Even if Democrats win the Obamacare battle โ by ignoring the transparent will of the voters โ they are likely to lose the war over health reform.





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