Rahm, Jarrett bully businesses

Last week, several businesses announced that they would sustain massive losses because of ObamaCare and would likely have to fire workers. These included giants like Caterpillar, Verizon, AT&T, and Deere & Co. Caterpillar announced they would lose $100 million in the first year alone. AT&T put its cost at $1 billion. With polls showing a solid majority of Americans think passage of ObamaCare was a bad thing, the White House can't take this lying down.

"These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general," says a White House legislative affairs staffer. "Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative websites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It's BS."

On Friday White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett were calling the CEOs and Washington office heads of the companies that took the financial hits and attacked them for doing so. One Washington office head said that the White House calls were accusatory and "downright rude."

This is political intimidation in its finest form, both of journalists and businessmen. Emanuel is a master of the threatening hissy fit and Jarrett has played her share of hardball politics as well. Still, for a presidential administration to try to shut companies up for something as simple as reporting losses is unprecedented in our history.

And it's not just the White House.

Waxman of California, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak of Michigan released letters they wrote to the executives, saying their plans to record expenses against earnings as a result of the law contradict other estimates. The lawmakers requested the executives appear at hearing Stupak plans on April 21.

“The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern,” Waxman and Stupak, both Democrats, wrote in the letters yesterday. “They also appear to conflict with independent analyses.”

In other words, Waxman is outraged because what his friends at the Center for American Progress said would happen with their "independent analyses" isn't actually going to happen.

The problem here is in Medicare Part D. Previously the government had offered tax subsidies for all companies that offered Part D to their retirees. Businesses like Caterpillar and AT&T quickly signed on, seeing it as a cost-effective way to take care of their retired employees. ObamaCare cuts these subsidies because the president wanted a way to make the bill appear deficit-neutral to the CBO. When Republicans warned that Medicare cuts could hurt seniors and companies, they were shouted down by Obama and company. Now that their warnings are playing out in real life, the White House is desperately trying to cover up the evidence.