You don’t need the farmer’s almanac to predict the next big chill about to hit every state in the union. If President Obama’s new health law isn’t stopped, the hiring freeze on small employers will damage America’s economy more than any Alberta Clipper ever could.
Between the biting wintry blasts of his health insurance tax, aptly known as the “HIT,” and this unconstitutional mandate to force Americans to buy health insurance, the president’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will lengthen unemployment lines and melt more than $87 billion from small businesses, employees and individuals within a decade.
Would you hire people to sit around and do nothing in your small business? Certainly not. But Washington, where it snows taxpayer dollars year-round, remains cool to free enterprise.
Many misguided policymakers give Main Street the cold-shoulder, claiming that you and millions of other entrepreneurs simply refuse to create jobs. They say you’re hoarding big piles of cash like Ebenezer Scrooge. They ignore the reality that the excessive regulations, unreasonable taxes and burdensome paperwork that they themselves create frosts hiring opportunities and locks the economy in the cooler.
They should read the NFIB Research Foundation’s forecasts that states future private-sector job losses caused by the health tax will rise faster than the barometric pressure advancing an arctic cold front. Employer-sponsored health insurance stemming from the HIT will nip in the bud between 125,000 to 249,000 jobs in 2021 alone. But the heaviest burden will fall on small businesses like yours, accounting for nearly three-fifths of the losses.
The financial harm to small-firm owners, employees and the self-employed could reach nearly $300 billion over 20 years, severely impacting more than two million small businesses, 12 million employees, the self-insured, as well as 26 million people who now enjoy employer-sponsored coverage. Already struggling families will see premiums leap $5,000 over a decade.
On Capitol Hill, NFIB has gained the support of many pro-small-business members of Congress to repeal the HIT and protect your company. In the Senate, Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming, Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch of Utah and Small Business Committee Ranking Member Olympia Snowe of Maine are leading their colleagues in a rollback effort. In the House, Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, a Ways and Means Committee member, heads a bipartisan group of 94 co-sponsors determined to defend you from this tax.
And the Supreme Court has agreed to hear our argument that the president’s demand to buy insurance is unconstitutional. But until the high court strikes down the law or Congress votes for full repeal, we will continue to fight the health tax and its mandate that will deny you the opportunity grow and create the jobs necessary to thaw this frigid economy.
Rest assured, NFIB will never cease its efforts in Washington to put this bad law and its anti-small-business tax scheme on ice once and for all.
Dan Danner
President and CEO, NFIB
No comments:
Post a Comment