Obamacare will take a huge chunk out of the American economy, so says Caterpillar, Inc., which said in a letter to House leadership that the bill under consideration would increase the company’s health care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone:
In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.”
Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.
One of the biggest arguments for Obamacare is that businesses are weighed down by current costs — the bill is said to allow these businesses to invest their money more efficiently. Apparently that’s not the case here.
The Peoria-based company is one of many hard-hit employers in Illinois, which has an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent. It’s delusional to think that adding $100 million to their operating costs won’t make it more difficult to hire. In fact, this is exactly what 130 economists said in their letter to President Obama yesterday saying that the bill was unquestionably a job killer.
This isn’t the first time Caterpillar has had to force Obama to face the facts. At an event held with CEO Jim Owens in February 2009, Obama claimed that the stimulus would allow Caterpillar “to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off.” (The company had just laid off 22,000 people.) Once the president left the event, however, Owens was asked if the stimulus package would be able to stop the 22,000 layoffs. His reply: “I think realistically no. The truth is we’re going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again.”
