A Tax Bill Disguised as a Health Care Bill
Former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, asks in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Remember when health-care reform was supposed to make life better for the middle class?” The short answer, he writes is that the Baucus bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, would hit middle class families “with a double-digit increase in their marginal tax rate.” Holtz-Eakin also asks:
“Why does it make sense to double down on the kinds of entitlements already in crisis, instead of passing medical malpractice reform and allowing greater competition among insurers? Why should middle-class families pay more than $2,000 on average, by my estimate, in taxes in the process?”
The National Taxpayers Union also criticized the Senate Finance Committee for its vote for the Baucus health care bill, citing its hidden tax increases. In a press release yesterday, Pete Sepp, NTU’s vice president for policy and communications said:
“Instead of trimming back wasteful spending and passing common-sense reforms, like implementing fundamental tax reform, allowing purchases of health insurance across state lines, or proposing strong tort reform, the Senate Finance Committee today chose a path that would heap further burdens on one the most over-leveraged groups on Earth: the U.S. taxpayer.”