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Posts Tagged ‘writedowns’
March 31st, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Who Are Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak to Be Lecturing CEOs?
Posted by Print

Within days of ObamaCare’s passage, AT&T, Caterpillar and other American employers announced hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings writedowns pursuant to U.S. accounting laws.  Although Democrats falsely claim that these restatements are mere political attacks aimed at Barack Obama, the simple fact is that they are legally required to report the corporate costs of ObamaCare’s tax increase on the retiree drug benefits that they pay each year. Specifically, the Financial Standard Accounting Board’s 1990 Statement Number 106 mandates earnings restatements due to anticipated future retiree liabilities.  If these employers did not report the writedowns, they’d be prosecuted.

The most despicable reaction of all, however, may be that of two Congressmen who played a critical role in imposing ObamaCare in the first place.  Henry Waxman (D – California) and Bart Stupak (D – Michigan), those two profiles in cowardice and malevolence, have now demanded the CEOs of AT&T, John Deere, Caterpillar and Prudential appear to justify themselves before their committee.   According to their letter, “the new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern.”

In other words, who are you going to believe – Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, Barack Obama and their doctored Congressional Budget Office predictions, or your own actual bottom line and real-world numbers? Every person with a grain of sense anticipated the negative consequences of ObamaCare, but such effects seem to have blindsided ObamaCare’s advocates.

More generally, who are Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak to be hauling the CEOs of some of America’s most valuable and successful companies to Capitol Hill to explain themselves?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  How many jobs have Waxman and Stupak created in their lives compared to AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere and others?  How many successful products have Waxman and Stupak contributed to the world economy and human progress?  Why aren’t the CEOs the ones hauling Waxman and Stupak to explain their retrograde economic views and the destruction that they are wreaking on America, rather than vice-versa?  Why aren’t Waxman and Stupak explaining their toxic behavior to a nationwide audience?

We live in an increasingly Orwellian era, and the sheer weight of absurdity may soon cause a snap.