I’m sure that Labor knows it, but they’re now in a position of maximum leverage, with the White House desperate to take another pound of flesh out of the the so-called Cadlillac health care plans in order to pay for more robust subsidies and other goodies not in the Senate bill. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, so hopefully it’s not a deal-breaker:
Under the president’s plan, those families with health care plans over $27,500 and individuals with plans over $10,200 would be taxed starting in 2018. That tax would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index plus one percent, which would provide some additional comfort to those with high-end policies — specifically for labor workers who had bargained for these plans.
The plan, however, got tripped up after congressional negotiators received poorer-than-expected feedback from the Congressional Budget Office, a senior Democratic hill aide confirmed. And as a compromise, on Wednesday, they began discussing indexing the tax simply to the Consumer Price Index.
“What the White House is putting out is not any big major changes to the deal,” said a source briefed on the matter. “What they are talking about is the way things are right now the tax was indexed to CPI+1 and they want to change it to CPI general inflation.”
So, after meeting with the White House tonight, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka will meet with his board tomorrow. This pushes back the vote to Sunday, which I believe is the day that Obama leaves for Indonesia and Australia. In any case, Labor has the White House over a barrel. Even simple delay in responding will screw up the optics for the administration, since Obama already delayed his trip for three days. Now is the time to demand a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act.
