Taxes for me and thee but not for union members

Max Baucus is searching out for other sources of revenue to pay for the insuring people who are not insured now and for subsidizing the cost of buying insurance on those who will be mandated to purchase what they haven't already purchased. One source of revenue is to tax the so-called "Cadillac plans" that provide more than what the government determines is the right amount of health insurance. But the Democrats don't want that since many of those health plans are ones that union members receive. Their unions negotiated those plans and they're now part of members' compensation packages. Taxing those plans would anger the unions so House Democrats are signaling that they won't support any plan to tax such plans.

The letter from 154 House Democrats to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urges her “to reject proposals to enact an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans that could be potentially passed on to middle-class families.”

“This is not an obscure detail of health care reform,” said Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, who drafted the letter. “Taxing health benefits was explicitly debated in the campaign by presidential candidates and people running for Congress.”

And there is the special irony that this is just what candidate Barack Obama attacked John McCain on during the campaign.

Then-candidate Barack Obama attacked Republican Sen. John McCain in a series of television ads last fall for a plan to lift the tax exemption on health insurance plans, which he cast as a radical departure and a crippling new tax.

The unions are threatening to go to the mattresses on this.

“We will fight pretty doggedly attempts to tax benefits because we’ve paid for those benefits over the years — we’ve forgone wage increases, pension increases, days off and everything else to get those medical benefits,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told POLITICO recently.

Well, when the unions come out in full force in opposition to something, we know what will happen. There will be some sort of adjustment that won't tax union members or their plans. Of course, that will vastly decrease the revenue stream that Baucus needs. Where will he find the money he needs after that? Check your wallets.