Unions, Obamacare, Congressional Fixes: AKA Corruption of the Obama Admin

The 40,000-member union of The International Longshore and Warehouse Union recently cut ties with the AFL-CIO, citing it’s increased frustration with the federation’s policy positions on issues such as immigration and healthcare reform.

Recently, the head of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, exclaimed how surprised he was that Obamacare is causing workers to cut back employees to less than 30 hours per week to avoid giving them healthcare.  In a recent interview, Trumka admitted that the “Affordable Care Act does need some modifications to it, because as it does right now, what is happening is, you have employers that the law says if you pay your, if your employees work 30 hours or more a week, you’ve got to give them healthcare.  So they’re restructuring their workforce to give workers 29 and half hours so they don’t have to provide them healthcare.”

Wouldn’t any clear-headed or logical person have been able to predict this, particularly the idiots who wrote this legislation?  Let’s see…if you include in the bill that companies are exempt from paying fines for not providing healthcare coverage to employees who work less than 30 hours per week, and you also include that there is no mandatory requirement to provide healthcare at all for these workers, could you not foresee that employers would reduce their full-time work staff to part-time status?  Now suddenly local governments, universities, retail chains, restaurants, hospitals, and other institutions all over the United States are reducing their workforce’s hours from 40 to 29.5, which means not having to provide any benefits whatsoever!  And these geniuses couldn’t see it coming?

The Time’s Alex Rogers reports that Trumka admitted “we made some mistakes” in writing ObamaCare at a recent Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington, D.C.

“We”?  How many people were aware that the head of the nation’s largest federation of unions was behind closed doors helping to write the healthcare legislation?  What other union bosses and leaders were there?  For that matter, who WAS responsible for writing the Affordable Care Act?  No wonder Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass the bill to know what was in it!  Apparently not only did our lawmakers not read it, but they didn’t even write it!

Trumka also stated, “That is obviously something that no one intended.  No one intended the act to result in people working fewer hours just so they [employers] don’t have to pay for healthcare, so that’s something that needs to be addressed.”

It needs to be addressed now?  And how, exactly, do you go back and address this problem now that employers all across America are cutting back?

The Labor Unions spent fortunes making sure Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 and 2008 and backing President Obama’s election campaigns.  On November 7, 2012, The Caucus reported that Richard Trumka claimed full credit for Obama’s victory in the White House.  Without the nation’s labor unions, Obama would not have won the key states of Ohio, Wisconsin, and Nevada and their combined 34 electoral votes.

“We did deliver those states, ” Mr. Trumka said.  “Without organized labor, none of those states would have been in the president’s column.”

So apparently, as a “thank you,” President Obama allowed the union leaders a seat at the table when writing the healthcare legislation they pushed so hard to get.  According to Forbes, however, “unions are waking up to the fact that Obamacare is heavily disruptive to the health benefits of their members.”

Back in July of this year, the representatives of the nation’s largest unions sent a letter to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, giving dire warnings about the outcome of Obamacare on American workers.  The letter was written by James P. Hoffa, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters; Joseph Hansen, the international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union; and Donald Taylor, president of UNITE-HERE, the Union responsible for representing food service, airport, hotel, gaming, and textile workers.

The letter states how catastrophic the legislation will be for millions of Americans.  They state that, “on behalf of the millions of working men and women we represent and the families they support, we can no longer stand silent in the face of elements of he Affordable Care Act tat will destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hard working Americans.”

They acknowledge that the law creates the incentive for employers to cut back hours below 30 hours a week, meaning that not only do employees lose health care and other benefits, but they now have to deal with a substantial reduction in pay!  Unless, of course, they can go out and secure a second job to earn those last 11.5 hours a week.

Again, these are the very groups that had a hand in writing the legislation but are now opposed to it and turning on the Obama Administration.  In response, the White House is rolling out more special favors to the unions.  According to a recent Forbes article, “union leaders are seeking special treatment, and additional taxpayer subsidies, that other participants in employer-sponsored coverage don’t get.”

What a surprise.

It remains to be seen how the Administration can fully implement these special favors without imposing a huge cost to American taxpayers.  According the Forbes article it would cost over a half a trillion dollars over the next ten years.  They go on to say “it’s inconceivable that the White House would seek to impose such a ‘fix’ to Obamacare without the consent of Congress.  But given the other changes that the administration has made to the health law- of similarly questionable legality- we can’t rule anything out.”

This refers to the recent panic on Capitol Hill when lawmakers and their staffers thought momentarily that they would be subjected to the same legislation they imposed on the rest of America.  Fortunately for them, President Obama personally involved himself in making sure that the Congressman and Hill staffers could retain access to their current insurance subsidies and not fall victim to what the rest of Americans must.

At a recent Ways and Means committee hearing about Obamacare implementation, the acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel stated that he would rather keep his current health care plan than the one provided under the law that the IRS will oversee.

And so it is, employees of the IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services are unhappy about the prospect of having to join the exchanges, and like our esteemed Congress will fight for a legislative “fix.”  The Labor Union representing IRS agents is urging its members to tell Congress that they are “very concerned” about being required to enroll the Obamacare’s mandatory health insurance exchanges. If things go according to plan, they will also find themselves exempt from the legislation they are enforcing on the rest of us.

So the Labor Unions got Obama and many other Democrats elected.  They helped to write the healthcare legislation, but now because it is negatively affecting their own people, they are unhappy with it and want aspects of it rewritten or “fixed” as they call it.   As they protect their own, they seek exemptions and special favors that the rest of Americans can’t receive.  The administration strives to keep the union leaders happy because future Democratic elections for depend upon union support.

Yes, I would say the “fix” has been in for a long time now.  What a travesty and catastrophic nightmare imposed upon the American people!   I guess it’s really saying something when Eric Zuesse with the notoriously liberal Huffington Post calls the Obama Administration the most corrupt in U.S. History!

I happen to wholeheartedly agree.