Word: breaking
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Lucia Whalen, the Harvard Magazine employee who called police two weeks ago about the possible break-in at professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s home, spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday, saying at a press conference that she had been deeply hurt by accusations that she is a racist...
...Another Democratic interest group, organized labor, has blocked the most logical and progressive way to fund a universal health-care system - eliminating the tax exclusion on health benefits and replacing it with a progressive tax credit. The health-care exclusion is, at approximately $250 billion, the single biggest tax break in the federal code. The problem is that unions have negotiated generous health packages over the years. According to Senator Stabenow, autoworkers get a package worth about $15,000 per year - and public employees get more, about $19,000. "The police and firefighters get even more," she says. "But they...
...Then there is conservative Republican Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who has announced she will be filling in only the number of people in her household and no other information since she doesn't trust the government to use it responsibly. (Technically, doing so would break a federal law.) In a nice twist, the state of Minnesota itself is rallying its residents to send in their forms, since shifting populations nationwide may mean the loss of a Minnesota seat in the House. The Minnesota Complete Count Committee will be in full force at the state fair this summer, handing out buttons...
...About two-thirds of nonelderly Americans get health insurance through their employers, and despite the fact that the tax break is regressive - the more expensive your employer's health-insurance plan, the bigger the break you get - very few of them would look kindly on reforming the system. With that in mind, some lawmakers have proposed capping the amount of employer-sponsored health insurance that could be provided tax-free - leaving only workers with pricey, so-called Cadillac health plans worth north of $25,000 a year subject to new taxation. But even this isn't exactly guaranteed to have...
...reportedly pivoted from taxing workers to embracing a plan to tax the insurers who offer the most expensive health-insurance plans. Doing so would generate some tax revenue - though far less than the $1 trillion-plus over 10 years that could be generated by eliminating the tax-benefit break entirely - and possibly help "bend the curve" (to borrow the wonky slogan du jour) of rising health-care costs. The theory is that high-end insurance that covers everything at little or no cost to consumers discourages those people from shopping around for less expensive care and encourages wasteful overuse...