If you listen to Nancy Pelosi, the $1.04 trillion bill is a “starting point and a path to success to lower costs to consumers and businesses.” Believing that, however, requires ignoring quite a few facts. This is not a victimless bill, not by a long shot. The bill is most explicit in its promise to lump a surtax onto the richest Americans’ already-high rates (“The new surtax would hit individual households earning $350,000 and above. It would start at 1 percent, bumping up to 1.5 percent at $500,000 in income and to 5.4 percent at $1 million.”). But they’re counting on a lack of sympathy for high earners to let that slide. Let’s move on to the more P.R.-problematic victims of the health bill (aside from all of us who would soon be on the receiving end of the kind of mediocre, egalitarian health care of Ezra Klein’s dreams). All but the smallest businesses (only $250K payroll and lower exempted) will be saddled with a new tax equal to a percentage of payroll if they don’t provide health care for their workers. And, when I say small, I mean small.
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