And if you're going to appear on national TV and talk about healthcare and labor unions you need much better preparation on the subject. You misrepresented the position of union members and most progressives on the question of taxing workers health care benefits.
Now, I want to know why you favor taxing the health care benefits of workers who are not union members and letting the healthcare benefits of union workers go untaxed?
That's what I got out of your interview.
Sensing blood in the water, one of the panelists said to you point blank: "It just doesn't seem fair for people who are making a working class income and aren't in the union, are going to have their health care benefits taxed."
Well, that certainly would be unfair. And therefore I was hoping you would clearly and simply say in response that "the labor movement is absolutely opposed to any government taxes on the healthcare benefits of any working people." Perhaps you didn't know it, but that is the position of the labor movement.
Instead you replied to her: "It's time for unions to get a fair shake. For 30 or 40 years they've gotten nothing." ?????!!!!
That statement, if anything, was confusing and helped to reinforce her false claim that the labor movement advocates taxing the health benefits of all workers except union members!
And for the last 30 or 40 years labor union members have "gotten nothing". While we've been taking a beating in recent years, no serious and informed person thinks the labor movement hasn't achieved anything meaningful for members for the last 30 or 40 years.
Please don't agree to appear on FoxTV anymore or suggest to them someone else who is better prepared and able to handle themselves in such a hostile atmosphere. You might like appearing on national TV but put what's best for the healthcare, labor and other movements first.
Sorry this post sounds tough but I think the best way you can be helped is by progressives being honest and frank with you.
Nothing personal.
Once again.
We are against taxing the health care benefits of working people because that would be unfair and because .....
Taxing Health Care Will Destroy Democrats
Taxing health care will turn working class people against Obama and ruin the Democratic Party.
By William Greider
The Nation
June 19, 2009.
Vincent Panvini Sr. is one of those Washington insiders whose names seldom appear in the newspapers but can be found in hundreds of Rolodexes on Capitol Hill. He is the guy in charge of political contributions for the Sheet Metal Workers union. In the 2008 election, Panvini handed out almost $2.4 million, 97 percent of which went to Democrats. Panvini's choices will change, he predicts, if the Democratic Party decides to reform healthcare on the backs of union members--taxing the health benefits that working people won in collective bargaining by forgoing wage increases.
"This is a political train wreck waiting to happen," Panvini warns. In recent weeks he has been bluntly informing party leaders that they are flirting with a disaster comparable to the great wipeout Democrats suffered in 1994, when Gingrich Republicans won control of the House.
.... a big switch on taxing benefits would double-cross a major constituency and break some important promises. During the presidential campaign, Obama attacked John McCain for proposing the very same idea. Obama further promised he would not increase taxes on the middle class. "If you tax health benefits, you are taxing the middle class," Panvini explains. The issue was critical, he adds, in persuading many white working-class voters to put aside racial fears and return to the Democratic Party.
If the president embraces the plan, the consequences, Panvini thinks, could be explosive. "If any of these Democratic senators vote for this, they will be voted out in 2010, and this will definitely be used against Obama in 2012. People are already hurting, unemployed--and then you are going to tax them more? That's crazy."
The conventional view of the 1994 election is that voters were reacting to Bill Clinton's failure to reform healthcare. But labor's interpretation, which I share, is that working people felt betrayed and abandoned by Clinton's rightward turn toward NAFTA and Robert Rubin's Wall Street economics. Many working people stayed home in 1994; some even opted for Newt Gingrich's anti-establishment attack line.
Please read the complete article at:
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/140777/taxing_he... /
-----------------------------------------------------
And this article is the kind of crap we will read on a massive scale if benefits are taxed
-Just a little sampling here on what to expect should benefits be taxed under a Democratic sponsored healthcare plan.-
Democrats Contemplate Massive Tax Increase to Pay for Obama's Healthcare Plan
June 19, 2009
By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
During his victorious presidential run, Barack Obama promised he would not raise taxes on the middle class. "Under my plan," Obama told a New Hampshire gathering, "no family making less than $250,000.00 a year will see any form of tax increase."
Somebody wasn't paying attention.
Democrats in the House of Representatives are now contemplating massive tax increases in order to raise some of the revenues they need to fund Obama plan's for a government takeover of the U.S. healthcare system.
According to published reports, tax increases under consideration include:
A 10 cents per can tax on soda and other sugary drinks
A 2 percent increase on income taxes for single taxpayers earning more than $200,000 per year
A 2 percent increase on income taxes for households earning more than $250,000 per year
A new employer payroll tax targeting 3 percent of employers' health care expenditures
Taxing certain employer-provided health insurance benefits
Higher taxes on alcohol
An increase in the Medicare payroll tax
A European-style Value Added Tax or VAT of 1.5 percent or more
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/peter-roff/2009/06/19/democ... 
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