You Thought Passing Health Reform Was Hard? Try Repealing It.
Jonathan Cohn
TNR
December 2, 2010
Critics of health care reform this week thought they would get their first win in the campaign to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Instead they got a lesson in just how politically challenging a wholesale repeal might be.
At issue was an obscure, but unpopular, provision within the new health law that requires businesses to file 1099 tax forms anytime they purchase goods or services worth more than $600. The idea is to collect income taxes from the vendors producing those goods and services -- taxes many vendors avoid paying now. The change is supposed to produce $19 billion in new revenue. The money will help pay for the health overhaul's consumer protections and coverage expansions.
But many businesses say that filing all the new 1099s will be a huge burden. Even some of the law's architects, like Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., say they are sympathetic to those complaints. For several months, they have been promising to strip the provision -- and to replace it with something better.
It's the "replace" part that got tricky on the Senate floor. One proposal, put forth by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., would have made up for the lost funds by giving the president discretion to find $19 billion in offsetting spending cuts. The alternative, from Baucus, didn't have offsetting taxes or spending cuts -- on the theory that the measure as a whole would still be reducing the deficit. Neither provision got enough votes to pass.
(More here.)
TNR
December 2, 2010
Critics of health care reform this week thought they would get their first win in the campaign to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Instead they got a lesson in just how politically challenging a wholesale repeal might be.
At issue was an obscure, but unpopular, provision within the new health law that requires businesses to file 1099 tax forms anytime they purchase goods or services worth more than $600. The idea is to collect income taxes from the vendors producing those goods and services -- taxes many vendors avoid paying now. The change is supposed to produce $19 billion in new revenue. The money will help pay for the health overhaul's consumer protections and coverage expansions.
But many businesses say that filing all the new 1099s will be a huge burden. Even some of the law's architects, like Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., say they are sympathetic to those complaints. For several months, they have been promising to strip the provision -- and to replace it with something better.
It's the "replace" part that got tricky on the Senate floor. One proposal, put forth by Sen. Mike Johanns, R-Neb., would have made up for the lost funds by giving the president discretion to find $19 billion in offsetting spending cuts. The alternative, from Baucus, didn't have offsetting taxes or spending cuts -- on the theory that the measure as a whole would still be reducing the deficit. Neither provision got enough votes to pass.
(More here.)
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