Remember the Enron scandal in 2001, which drove a bipartisan majority in Congress to demand far-reaching reforms in corporate accounting? Democrats have discovered this week that maybe they can’t handle the truth — at least not when it exposes the real economic effect of Obamacare on private sector companies large and small. Thousands of employees, their families and retirees get their health insurance coverage through firms that are now having to figure out how to cope with government-run health care.

On Capitol Hill and in the White House on Monday, Democrats were fuming over a series of announcements that started Friday from Fortune 500 firms saying their bottom lines will take huge negative hits because of changes in tax law mandated by Obamacare. That hit in turn means lower profit projections. Caterpillar estimates, for example, that Obamacare will cost it $100 million; John Deere faces expenses of $150 million; 3M, $90 million; AK Steel, $31 million; Valero, $20 million. And then there’s AT&T, which is marking its balance sheet down by a whopping $1 billion. All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimated a $14 billion haircut for these corporations.