White House advisers reacted with angry phone calls to the corporations in question. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., issued harassing document requests and demanded that the chief executive officers appear before his committee next month to answer for their sins. These corporations, which legally owe an honest reckoning to their shareholders, are only doing their duty by restating projections. By contrast, Waxman and many of his fellow Democratic leaders in Congress have used every government accounting and budget gimmick at their disposal to deceive Americans for the last year about the true costs of Obamacare. These Washington politicians have no business lecturing CEOs on honesty in accounting.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Stop telling the truth
On Capitol Hill and in the White House on Monday, Democrats were fuming over a series of announcements that started Friday from Fortune 500 firms saying their bottom lines will take huge negative hits because of changes in tax law mandated by Obamacare. That hit in turn means lower profit projections. Caterpillar estimates, for example, that Obamacare will cost it $100 million; John Deere faces expenses of $150 million; 3M, $90 million; AK Steel, $31 million; Valero, $20 million. And then there's AT&T, which is marking its balance sheet down by a whopping $1 billion. All in all, the Wall Street Journal estimated a $14 billion haircut for these corporations.
White House advisers reacted with angry phone calls to the corporations in question. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., issued harassing document requests and demanded that the chief executive officers appear before his committee next month to answer for their sins. These corporations, which legally owe an honest reckoning to their shareholders, are only doing their duty by restating projections. By contrast, Waxman and many of his fellow Democratic leaders in Congress have used every government accounting and budget gimmick at their disposal to deceive Americans for the last year about the true costs of Obamacare. These Washington politicians have no business lecturing CEOs on honesty in accounting.
White House advisers reacted with angry phone calls to the corporations in question. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., issued harassing document requests and demanded that the chief executive officers appear before his committee next month to answer for their sins. These corporations, which legally owe an honest reckoning to their shareholders, are only doing their duty by restating projections. By contrast, Waxman and many of his fellow Democratic leaders in Congress have used every government accounting and budget gimmick at their disposal to deceive Americans for the last year about the true costs of Obamacare. These Washington politicians have no business lecturing CEOs on honesty in accounting.
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