In some ways it sounds as though Senator Crapo means well, when he states there should never be any taxes on people earning $200,000 or less to pay for the Health Care Reform Bill as written by the Senate. However, the methodology in the bill as proposed by his Amendment is not good.
I'll explain.
See, the Senate Bill has aready been moved to the floor for cloture. That means there will be debate and movement toward a vote, which already two weeks long. The Crapo Amendment is an amendment to the bill. So, the bill has to be passed in order to invoke the amendment. That means the Senate bill will pass into law before any of the amendments take effect.
The Crapo amendment is very nonspecific in its approach to being sure there are no taxes on people earning less than $200,000. I'll mention the type of taxes Crapo addresses, but, basically the Democrats have already moved most of any potential tax on people below $200,000 off the bill with a restructuring of funding similar to the House.
But, the Crapo amendment wants to send the bill back to the Finance Committee to be sure there are no taxes on people earning less than $200.000. I don't know if that is even possible. The Senate Bill has moved out of committee. That was by vote of the committees that wrote it. I have never heard any bill being moved back to committee once it is passed into law and that is very poor precedent.
I don't believe the Crapo amendment is constitutional in its methodology as it goes against Constitutional procedure in passage of a bill.
For that reason alone, it would be wrong to vote in favor of the amendment.
But, for sake of argument, let's just say all that is possible. A bill is passed into law and it goes back to the Finance Committee for rework of its financing to be sure there are no Americans under $200,000 earnings that will be taxed in ANY way.
The taxes that are mentioned are primarily 'user' taxes, similar to sale taxes. The taxes called surtax on health insurance are being reworked by the Senate to exclude anyone other than the upper 0.2% of the populous of the USA that earn more than $2.4 million in a year as a single taxpayer or $4.8 million per year as a couple.
So, those surtaxes are being removed from the bill. That was made clear yesterday by Senators from Ohio, Florida and Minnesota. The remaining taxes are 'user of service taxes.' They include taxes on Medical Devices, Plastic Surgery and stuff like that.
Senator Crapo wanted to align himself with the spirit of speech made by President Obama. I thought that was a nice thing to do, however, the methodology that would have to be applied to such taxes would be very complicated and would result in a great deal of problems to the consumer.
Basically what would have to happen is that any consumer of such services earning $200.000 or less in a year would have to carry some kind of 'tax card' stating they didn't have to pay the tax. There is a high degree of fraud and corruption that could occur with such a card and there is the administrative cost of producing such a card.
What can occur and what should occur and why Senator Crapo needs to go back to the drawing board is very, very simple.
Senator Crapo needs to withdraw his amendment and rewrite it to read, "When any individual earning $200,000 per year or any couple earning $400,000 incur taxes affiliated with the Health Reform Bill of 2009, they may take those taxes off their Adjusted Gross Income. That way, those folks earning $200,000 per year would have a method of removing those taxes even though it would be after the fact. They would have to have receipts and there would not have to be an extra worksheet, but, simply an addition of the receipts that would be entered into a new and special place on all tax returns for the reduction of those taxes.
Or better than effecting the Adjusted Gross Income, add it at the end of the tax return as a credit for refund.
Simple. Wouldn't have to go back to committee, won't violate the USA Constitution and it would uphold the spirit of the speech by President Obama.
