Titus Speaks with Forked Tongue on Health Care Reform

(Mark Noonan) – The other day Rep. Dina Titus had this to say on the House health care bill:

“With a large number of small businesses in my suburban Southern Nevada district, it is critical that we do everything we can to strengthen their hand so they can be critical engines of growth in our community…”

If you read that while imagining Titus saying it with her fingernails-on-chalkboard accent, it does get a bit excruciating. But not as painful as the Pelosi-Titus health care experiment will be for Nevada taxpayers. I wonder how Titus will square her concern for “critical engines of growth” with the following, culled out of the bill by Americans for Tax Reform:

“Individual Mandate Surtax (Page 296): If an individual fails to obtain qualifying coverage, he must pay an income surtax equal to the lesser of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) or the average premium…

Surtax on Individuals and Small Businesses (Page 336): Imposes an income surtax of 5.4 percent on MAGI over $500,000 ($1 million married filing jointly)… This would raise the top marginal tax rate in 2011 from 39.6 percent under current law to 45 percent—a new effective top rate.

Codification of the ‘Economic Substance Doctrine’ (Page 349): Empowers the IRS to disallow a perfectly legal tax deduction or other tax relief merely because the IRS deems that the motive of the taxpayer was not primarily business-related.”

Seems to me that if you don’t go with the government plan, you’re going to pay higher taxes. Also appears that if you’re running a small business your tax rate could go up to 45%. And, finally, looks like the IRS will be empowered to hit you any way it wants if Pelosi and Titus find that revenues aren’t covering the cost of a bloated, government-run health system.

We’ve seen a lot of this, lately – Democrats who talk a great game about how wonderful and cheap the new program will be, but then when the details come out we find we’ve been had (remember how they said that if we didn’t pass the stimulus unemployment would rise to 8%? We wish it were only 8% right now…). Its classic bait and switch. And its why Democrats are resisting all efforts to put the bill before the public before a vote is taken.

Titus needs to have her feet held to the fire: if she’s really serious about helping Nevadans and Nevada’s small businesses, then she’s going to have to come out against Pelosi’s plan. If she doesn’t – and we don’t expect she will – then she’ll be exposed as just another party-first, people-be-damned politician.