From The Washington Times today, “Health, climate bills seen to stifle hiring“:

While President Obama and congressional leaders say they would like to do more to spur job creation, economists and business executives warn that their plans to impose new health care and climate-change costs on corporations would have the opposite effect.

The initiatives, according to this analysis, are likely to overwhelm any positive impact on jobs from stimulus measures by giving businesses a reason to keep laying people off.

Seems painfully obvious. Or prospectively painful, obviously.

The NAM’s John Engler is quoted on taxes included in the health care legislation:

While President Obama and congres — sional leaders say they would like to do more to spur job creation, economists and business executives warn that their plans to impose new health care and climate-change costs on corporations would have the opposite effect.

The initiatives, according to this analysis, are likely to overwhelm any positive impact on jobs from stimulus measures by giving businesses a reason to keep laying people off.

Jay Timmons, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, issued a statement following House passage of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act:

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) actively supports health care reform that lowers cost and improves care. Ninety-seven percent of NAM members voluntarily provide employees with quality health benefits. We advocate reforms that will reduce costs, improve efficiency and raise quality of health care.

Unfortunately H.R. 3962 fails these key tests. The public option will shift even more costs to private plans. Poorly conceived changes to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) will impose new cost burdens on business. And the 5.4 percent surtax on small business will add even more taxes to manufacturers struggling to emerge from the longest and deepest recession since the 1930s.

Manufacturers will continue to work diligently with the Senate for responsible health care reform that focuses on reducing costs, improving access and preserving what is working in the current system.

Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute talks to the citizens and business owners of Vevay, Indiana, and finds strong disagreement with a proposal in the House health care bill to levy an 8% tax on the payrolls of employers who do not offer health insurance to their workers. And then there’s the income surtax. From “‘Rich’ Taxes Cripple Small Towns“:

The small business owners of Vevay regard these proposed taxes as a recipe for more jobs lost. Lisa Fisher, owner of the Schenk Mansion Bed & Breakfast Inn, is a cancer survivor who pays for her own health insurance and doesn’t see a need for the government to offer insurance. “I don’t mind paying my fair share of taxes,” she told me, “but the government would rather tax me to death.”

Furchtgott, an economist, also reminds us of the consequences of raising taxes in a recession, or as the case may be, a depression.

Will history repeat itself in the United States in 2009 or 2010? Some economic historians believe that President Franklin Roosevelt’s tax hikes, in particular the Wealth Tax of 1935 and the Undistributed Profits Tax of 1936, worsened the Great Depression by making it harder for firms to accumulate capital for expansion. This was the conclusion of a 1983 study by a young Stanford economics professor, Ben Bernanke, now chairman of the Federal Reserve.

That seems like a safe bet, especially if you can combine tax increases with “the biggest reform of labor law since the Wagner Act,” i.e., the Employee Free Choice Act in whatever guise it takes.

Jay Timmons, executive vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers, appeared on Fox Business News yesterday to outline the problems/threats in health care legislation, particularly the House version.

Well the House bill certainly is potentially a jobs killer for two reasons: One is what you just mentioned — additional mandates, but most importantly to manufacturers — 70% of whom are small and medium-sized and file as individual taxpayers as S Corporations — the tax burden could be absolutely devastating and cause layoffs and killing jobs.

The clip is here.

P.S. Kudos to Fox Business for posting videos of their interviews. CNBC.com is the gold standard in online videos, but Fox — a new entry into cable business news — has gotten a credible start in useful dissemination of clips. The automated transcripts are rough, very rough, but still a helpful feature. Requested: Embed code.

House Financial Services begins its mark-up of H.R. 3200, the Affordable Health Choices Act, at 9 a.m. today.

Energy and Commerce starts at 2 p.m.

Have you read it yet?

Have the committee members?

We’ll cut to the chase by taking a detour around the 1,000-plus pages.

• Heritage Foundation, “Income Tax Surtax Should Not Fund Government Health Care Expansion“
• Tax Foundation, “House Leadership’s Health Care Plan Pushes Top Tax Rates Over 50% in 39 States“
• Washington Post editorial, “The Deep Pockets Mirage“:

THERE IS a serious case to be made that the U.S. income tax system should become more progressive. The average rate paid by the top 1 percent of households shrank from 33 percent in 1986 to about 23 percent in 2006. At the same time, the share of adjusted gross income claimed by that highest-earning sliver of American society doubled, from 11 percent to 22 percent. So, in principle, higher taxes for the well-heeled could make sense — as part of a broader rationalization of the unduly complex tax code.

But there is no case to be made for the House Democratic majority’s proposal to fund health-care legislation through an ad hoc income tax surcharge for top-earning households. The new surtax would hit individual households earning $350,000 and above. It would start at 1 percent, bumping up to 1.5 percent at $500,000 in income and to 5.4 percent at $1 million. The new levy would begin in 2011 and is supposed to raise $540 billion over 10 years, about half the projected cost of health-care reform. The rest of the money would come from reduced spending on Medicare and Medicaid — though the surtax for the lower two categories would jump by a percentage point each in 2013 unless the Office of Management and Budget determines that the rest of the bill has saved more than $150 billion.

Eight months ago, that is.

From Bloomberg, “Rangel Plans Push to Cut Top Corporate Tax Rate to 28 Percent: “(Bloomberg) — New York Representative Charles Rangel said he’s revising his tax overhaul proposal to reduce U.S. corporate tax rates to 28 percent, down from the current rate of 35 percent.”

That’s November 15, 2008. And now, July 15, 2009.

Bloomberg, “House Plans to Tax Millionaires to Fund U.S. Health-Care Plan“: “The surtax on wealthier Americans would be imposed based on adjusted gross income, meaning it would also apply to capital gains and dividends, which are currently taxed at a 15 percent rate. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said lawmakers targeted high earners because it ’causes the least amount of pain on the least amount of people.’”

As we know, 60 percent of all small businesses file as individuals, so along with tax increase in capital gains and dividends, businesses would also see a major tax increase.

Impressive serpentine policymaking, though.

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal builds on the Tax Foundation report we cited yesterday about the effect of a income tax “surtax” to pay for health care. In “The Small Business Surtax,” the Journal notes the fact that the majority small businesses — including manufacturers — file their taxes as individuals, so Rep. Charlie Rangel’s proposed tax increase would hit jobs creators the hardest.

Another implication of the Rangel plan is that America’s successful small businesses would pay higher tax rates than the Fortune 500, and for that matter than most companies around the world. The corporate federal-state tax rate applied to General Electric and Google is about 39% in the U.S., and the business tax rate is about 25% in the OECD countries. So the U.S. would have close to the most punitive taxes on small business income anywhere on the globe…[snip]

A new study by the Kaufman Foundation finds that small business entrepreneurs have led America out of its last seven post-World War II recessions. They also generate about two of every three new jobs during a recovery. The more the Obama Democrats reveal of their policies, the more it’s clear that they prize income redistribution above all else, including job creation and economic growth.

The House Democrats are expected to release their health care legislative package today. Will jobs creation have any place in their plan?