The Deferred Tax Increase

Amid the usual Bushit of the State of the Union speech, one nugget reeked particularly like GOPer. The masterpiece of Bush's current "blame it on the next guy" strategy was the proposal to tax the fortunate few of us who have health care plans costing us AND OUR EMPLOYERS together more than $7,500 per year. And I have the reddest of fishwrappers, the Houston Chronicle, to thank for pointing this out to me.

Here's how it works. Say your employer pays three-fourths of your health care and you pay $100 per month, or $1,200 per year. You're safe - the total cost of your health care is $4,800 per year. Now when health care, unrestrained and unregulated by GOPer philosophy, doubles in cost again in five years, the next President's term, you'd be paying $9,600 together, meaning that now you are paying taxes on $2,100 in additional income. So either you are now paying taxes on your health care, a de facto tax increase hidden as a measure that, just five years ago, looked like a tax-the-rich scheme is now taxing you.

Sound like the Alternative Minimum Tax to anyone?

There's no guarantee that the taxes collected would go to universalize health care, either, only the guarantee that, under Bush's plan, your taxes go up when, inevitably, the routine cost of health insurance goes through the artificial ceiling that will never be raised.

That, friends, is a back-door tax increase that does nothing, kind of like the Republican President who proposed it.