You thought the fight was over for making health insurance reform law? Think again, says the Chamber of Commerce. While they've declined to sink a lot of money into a specific repeal campaign, they'll still be contributing to candidates who want to roll back reforms. more significantly, however, they'll be focusing on how the regulations for this reform are written.
In a major push against the health overhaul, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend $50 million this summer and fall to sway election outcomes around the issue. It also plans to devote a team of staff members to shaping thousands of pages of new health regulations.
Thomas J. Donohue, the group's president and chief executive, sent a letter to the group's board members late Monday detailing an aggressive strategy to blunt the impact of the new law. Mr. Donohue said the business lobby would seek changes to regulations to "minimize the potentially harmful impacts of this bill on our members and the country."
If regulators "exceed legislative mandates or try for end-runs around the lawful rulemaking process," he wrote, the chamber "will take legal action."
"The Chamber is going to carry a message across the country that says the health care debate is not over," Mr. Donohue wrote. The law "is a major step in the wrong direction and will prove to be a serious drag on our economy and the nation's fiscal solvency."
This is the party line for the Chamber, and they'll be going all in on the effort to protect corporate welfare. They've had to say good-bye to the double-dip tax break they got on government subsidies in Medicare Part D, and will extract whatever else they possibly can from the regulations in turn.
The chamber plans to assign a team of its most experienced staff "to participate in the years-long process of writing the thousands of pages of federal regulations that will implement the many provisions in the legislation," Mr. Donohue wrote. While the chamber can't actually write those provisions, it can lobby for certain language and technical corrections.
It's just a thought, but perhaps these lobbyists shouldn't be allowed in any of the rooms where regulatory decisions are being made.