Dan Calabrese

Democrats want the government to pay for health care for everyone, but there is a problem. That costs an obscene amount of money, and with existing entitlements alone costing more than $2 trillion this year, and Democrats raising discretionary spending more than 8 percent, we’re already in hoc up to our eyeballs.

Nice country you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

The obvious answer, especially to a Democrat? Raise taxes! And their favored target for these taxes is the most generous of existing health care plans, the so-called “Cadillac” plans. Tax the most generous plans, Democrats figure, use the money to pay for everyone else’s health care. (As if this would raise anywhere near the money you would need, but that’s a subject for another day.)

There is, it seems, a problem. Or at least there was. Democrats would have you believe that the most generous health benefits belong to CEOs and Wall Street types. They don’t. The most generous health benefits belong to union members, the people whose leaders control a huge portion of the money that flows to Democrats for their re-election campaigns.

And as the federal goverment learned during the auto bailouts and bankruptcies earlier this year, you don’t ask the union to make concessions. The union’s place is on the receiving end of concessions, thank you very much.

So that tax-the-Cadillac-plans idea met with a decisive veto at the hands of one Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, when it was first proposed a few months back. Trumka assailed the idea as outrageous and made it clear that Democrats voting for such a tax just might, er, receive a little visit, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

Democrats know where their next meal is coming from – union membership dues – so they hurriedly sat down with Mr. Trumka to get a little, er, clarification on just what would be acceptable to the man behind the curtain.

Voila! Everything is fine now. Mr. Trumka today informed the Associated Press:

“If you show me a definition of a Cadillac plan that hits the Cadillac plans and not the middle class, then we’d take a look at that, of course. If you wanted to tax the Goldman Sachs plans, I think that’s fine.”

Translation: Tax the Cadillac plans to the  moon for all we care, as long as you exempt union plans.

There was a time when the nerve of the unions would have been the news here. Demanding more and more, but refusing to make even the slightest economic concession to pay for what you want, has been standard operating procedure for unions for some time now. And why not? The unions drove General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy with these tactics, and were rewarded with a federal bailout and major ownership stakes in both companies.

Scorched-earth when practiced by union heavies never fails.

More noteworthy here, though, is the shamelessness of Trumka’s language – making no bones about the union’s absolute power in the crafting of this legislation. Mr. Trumka, would it be OK if unions were exempt from the tax? “We’d take a look at that, of course.”

This is the language of a bank manager being pleaded with for a loan, or the prospective empower you desperately hope will hire you. In other words, it’s the language of someone who holds all the power, and is all too aware of it.

Democrats want to pay for their health care gambit with a tax on everyone who currently gets generous benefits, provided they are not union members, because the unions own the Democrats, lock, stock and barrell.

Some of the most famous union power centers include California, Michigan and General Motors. Oh, and now the White House and Capitol Hill. Better get excited about your future, America! Or you just might receive a friendly visit . . .

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