Gabriel Malor:
Treasury officials said Monday that businesses will be told to “certify” that they are not shedding full-time workers simply to avoid the mandate. Officials said employers will be told to sign a “self-attestation” on their tax forms affirming this, under penalty of perjury.
Although Treasury and HHS insist that employers are not reducing full-time workers because of Obamacare’s obvious and perverse incentives, the beleaguered agencies have decided to require employers to certify that they aren’t taking perfectly sensible decisions to preserve and protect their businesses.
This is mindless, arbitrary, and unlawful and I would love for someone at Treasury to point me to the statute that allows them to demand these certifications. I suspect that such a statute does not exist (if nothing else, we would have heard about it before now), and that it would violate the U.S. Constitution for IRS to punish a company for declining to make such a certification.
As if the law means anything to them. What are they going to threaten them with? A thought crime? Hey, Holder, Orwell is on the line…
Orwell and James Whitcomb Riley were correct.
Obama’s minions in Treasury and HHS might force people to SAY one thing.
But we will all know the opposite is true.
CNBC recently reported that such retailers as Sears, JC Penney, and Macy’s are all announcing a wave of store closings. Other retailers, like Sam’s and Target, are laying off thousands. http://www.cnbc.com/id/101353168
More details at:
http://www.businessinsider.com/shopping-malls-are-going-extinct-2014-1
The middle class has been hit particularly hard by all this economic distress.
One report from 2012 estimated that the middle class had lost 40 percent of their worth, leaving less disposable income for shopping at brick-and-mortar stores.
This is an indication that this down economy is not expected to get better any time soon.
BUT…..maybe Obama can redefine a down economy as an up economy, a la Orwell and the ”double plus good chocolate ration” that was lowered in the book, 1984.
I think companies should refuse to sign that certification. If the law doesn’t require it, there can be no penalty. That would be like saying that you have to certify that you do not have a gun in your house. No law has been written to prohibit that and therefore there can be no penalty for not complying with a non-law.
Or, as Comedian Tim Allen used to say, ”Now you’ve forced a lie out of me!”
@Nanny G:
True, so even if they did sign it, certifying that they did not, and if it is a lie, there can be no penalty because it is not a requirement of the law.
This is facism. No question. The fact that the Treasury bureaucrats feel they have the authority to order such a thing – which serves the dual function of providing propaganda fodder – “See! Companies are signing the attestation that obamacare isn’t killing jobs!” – as well as setting these companies up later for legal action by the DOJ when some disgruntled former employee says, “They told me I was being let go because of obamacare!”
Any company that is foolish enough to sign such an obvious “When did you stop beating you wife” government scam like this deserves whatever leftist assault hits them.
Obama and his thugs are clearly in violation of the Constitution with yet another unlawful executive fiat delay in a law they “deemed” passed. Their alleged concern for the middle class should be easily seen as false, given what they have done with the imposition of their socialism, compounded by the recent insane rules imposed by the EPA that are estimated to increase energy costs in the US by 70-80% so that cultists from the AGW insane asylum can impose their delusions on the rest of us.