While the forecasts by a panel of 17 top Federal Reserve leaders said it expects the economy may grow modestly (between 2 percent and 3 percent), they suggested that we could be facing a jobless recovery that would keep unemployment high throughout 2011 and beyond when companies will resist hiring many new workers.
Even so, if Obama gets his way, Democrats will pass a nationalized health program this summer that will sock the economy with one of the biggest entitlement programs and tax increases in American history, and will cost taxpayers and businesses more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years and trillions more after that.
This, despite the fact that the Fed forecasts unemployment will likely rise to 10.5 percent before this year ends and hit 10.6 in 2010 -- years when business advocates say this will be no time to burden our economy with higher taxes and costly healthcare mandates.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents thousands of U.S. employers, sent a stinging letter to Congress last week, saying it opposed the Democrats' healthcare reforms. Its chief complaint: the taxes it will slap on small businesses.
The Democrats' bill "fails to pass our simple litmus test: This legislation will not address the nation's health cost explosion, will steeply hike taxes in an already precarious economic situation, will fail to lead to more affordable, accessible, quality health coverage, and will lead us toward government-run health care. In short, it will make a bad situation worse, at great costs to the nation in jobs, taxes and freedom," the Chamber said.
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation's largest small-business association, said the bill would strike at the heart of the business sector that creates most of the jobs in this country.
"NFIB opposes the (Democrats' bill) because it threatens the viability of our nation's job creators, fails to increase access and choice to all small businesses, destroys choice and competition for private insurance, and fails to address the core challenge facing small businesses -- cost."
The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) weighed in, too, against the House bill's onerous surtax that would push the top federal income tax rate to nearly 50 percent and well over that when state and local taxes are factored in.
"Nearly 70 percent of manufacturers pay taxes at the individual rate. Many of these businesses fall into the higher tax bracket, even though most of their taxed income -- an average of $570,000 for small and medium-sized manufacturers -- is being reinvested into the business," the NAM letter said.
All of this raises yet another promise by Obama that doesn't ring true: that no one making less than $250,000 a year will see their taxes go up. In fact, the costs of these taxes, mandates and penalties, either directly or indirectly, will be born -- as they always are -- by every American worker and their families.