Krauthammer's Take [NRO Staff]:
On the Democrats’ zeal for health care at a time of economic stagnation:
In fact, in the version unveiled in the Senate, there is an increase in the Medicare payroll tax, which is precisely the opposite of what you want when you have over 10 percent unemployment. It discourages employment.
And the whole health-care obsession, which is essentially what the Democrats have been involved with over the entire year, [comes] at a time when people want the administration and the Congress to be looking at in addressing the economy as a whole. [Instead,] they spent all this effort on health care.
In and of itself, it [health-care reform] is retarding hiring, because if you are a small or medium-sized business, you are not going to hire while you have hanging over your head a bill that could increase health-care costs for every employee, or you might have to pay a penalty if you don't subsidize health insurance for your employees.
Already, you've got employers holding back because of the general economic conditions and the threat of higher taxes, and now you add on to that the uncertainty of the health-care proposal.
The administration is doing everything it can to discourage hiring at a time when it is deploring the high unemployment rate and touting, as we saw in the clip with poor old Joe [Biden], the robust growth rate, which is [now calculated to be] a lot less robust than the administration had announced.
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