My previous post was about the influence of money on politics. This is along the same lines but is a case of Democrats customizing the tax code to benefit their union base. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has been advocating taxing our health plans in order to pay for universal health care, or at least health care reform. His proposed policy is to tax “gold-plated” health insurance plans, defined as those better than a the health plans for federal employees. Examples given by supporters of the plan are commonly highly paid company execs. But as Bloomberg.com points out, $11/hr employees of Zappos would also be taxed as they have good insurance benefits.

Guess who else has “gold-plated” benefits. All those union workers that Democrats count on for votes. But they don’t have to worry, Senator Baucus is proposing that health insurance in collective bargaining agreements won’t be taxed.  That’s right, the tax code is based upon who you work for.

The Bloomberg article includes many good reasons for not applying the tax to union agreements. But that’s a straw man to the real point – each and every one of those arguments applies to each and every other working stiff and is a reason not to tax them either, they aren’t reasons to tax non-union people.

I’m not sure what to be more pissed at:

• The Democrats, at least the ones proposing the exemption think they can get away with this blatent attempt to financially reward votes.
• That our politicians now think it’s OK to base taxes on who you work for. They don’t want to tax the companies, this money will be deducted from your paycheck.
• That our politicians think health care reform means taxing the people with good health insurance. Let’s face it, they aren’t taxing the “gold-plated” insurance of a few.
• That “reform” simply means spreading insurance to those who don’t have it and not lowering costs and improving service for us all. Because the health-care industry makes money off us being sick and companies are resisting price increases, reform is simply an attempt to bring in new customers and get others to pay.

I’d like to hope I’m wrong about one of those points, but with the broken system have today I rather doubt I am.