“Honest” Jeff Schreiber, tireless advocate for corporate welfare

Jeff Schreiber is an exceptionally honest man. At least, he never tires of making very very serious legal threats against anyone who intimates that he might be less than honest. A few days ago, Jeff published a very honest and straightforward post decrying the terrible economic consequences of the recently passed Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”):

…Democrats… are enacting legislation which will directly stifle business development and growth… That added cost incurred by just these two organizations, John Deere and Caterpillar, will be passed along in the form of increased prices for products made by those two organizations.

Let’s examine this more closely. What, exactly, is the horrific, crushing “added cost” that has Jeffie clutching his pearls?

As explained in plain English in today’s Wall Street journal, “companies that provide this [Medicare Part D] benefit, as AT&T does, receive a federal subsidy, plus they can deduct the value of this subsidy from their taxes. The health overhaul cancels the deductibility of the subsidy.”

Let me ask a question of readers here in even plainer English: Can anybody actually be upset about the fact that giant corporations have to stop taking tax deductions for welfare checks they get for providing health care to their employees and retirees?

Well, clearly Jeff Schreiber for one is absolutely mortified that those evil, ruthless Democrats would even consider robbing brave, patriotic US companies of their hard-earned corporate welfare. I mean, come on now… isn’t the right to massive tax deductions for taking government subsidies enshrined somewhere in the Constitution? Or at least the Bill of Rights? Jeff Schreiber is a top-notch law student, so I am certain he could tell us exactly where this sacred right is codified.

It’s important to note that “honest” Jeff Schreiber did his readers a great service by neglecting to mention that the “costs” being reported by these corporations were, in fact, merely the loss of a double-dipping tax deduction granted to them under the Bush administration. Jeff Schreiber’s brand of “honesty” requires that he not confuse his readers with such obviously irrelevant facts.

Let’s look at another explanation of just how terribly these poor corporations will suffer:

The charges, however, are “noncash,” meaning companies don’t have to write a check for a billion dollars. As the WSJ explains, “since companies had created an asset based on the expectation they would be getting these deductions over the lives of their current and future retirees, they say they need to take a charge reflecting the fall in the asset’s value.” The money at stake for each company is not all that much in annual terms, and the change doesn’t kick in until 2013.

In more general terms, conservatives who are trying to use this story as a way to drum up opposition to health care reform or suggest that other tax hikes for businesses are just around the corner, should ask themselves if they would be expressing similar outrage if the law prevented welfare recipients from deducting the cost of their checks. It seems to me that this is precisely the kind of wasteful spending that advocates of responsible use of tax dollars should support. But as always, they’re nowhere to be found.

Yes, I think Jeff Schreiber has at last found a banner around which all true-blue American conservatives can rally. The loss of these billion-dollar tax deductions will undoubtedly drive up the prices of cheeseburgers and apple pie, leading to the ruin of the Republic. Schreiber should immediately register the domain name SaveOurCorporateWelfare.com and begin soliciting donations to help these poor, destitute giants of commerce offset the dreadfully unfair costs of the loss of their massive tax deductions. It’s only fair that we help those who cannot help themselves.