Texas GOP wants to offer tax breaks to companies that defy contraception mandate
The bill would give businesses a state tax break if they chose not to comply with the birth control benefit
Texas Republicans have introduced a bill that would turn the state into a safe haven for corporate tax dodgers and contraception insurance benefit avoiders.
As reported y Jessica Mason Pieklo at RH Reality Check:
House Bill 649, introduced by Rep. Jonathan Strickland (R-Bedford) would give for-profit businesses like Hobby Lobby a state tax break if they chose not to comply with the birth control benefit in Obamacare. Under the rule businesses that refuse to comply with the mandate face up to a $100 penalty fine per employee per day. Strickland’s bill would allow those businesses to claim a state tax break for the amount it must pay in penalties, up to the total the business owes in its total state tax bill. In other words, Texans would subsidize for-profit businesses seeking to break the law.
As Mason Pieklo notes, besides being obvious Tea Party bait (Texas is pro-business, at any cost!), the bill also indulges in the Lone Star State GOP’s other favorite pastime: Throwing reproductive rights under the bus. Texas remains on the warpath against Planned Parenthood, and as Salon’s Irin Carmon writes, low-income women’s healthcare continues to hang in the balance.
But there may be a constitutional bump in the road ahead for Republican lawmakers:
To be considered constitutional, a state tax generally cannot discriminate against interstate commerce. Broadly speaking, th Supreme Court has taken that to mean hat any tax which, by its terms or operations, imposes greater burdens on out-of-state goods, activities, or enterprises than on any competing in-state goods, activities or enterprises violates the Commerce Clause and will be struck down. The basic logic of this conclusion is pretty clear –states shouldn’t be able to simply preference their own industries at the expense of others if those industries touch or are part of national commerce.
By offering to waive state corporate tax liability in exchange for intentionally disobeying federal law mandating the birth control benefit, Rep. Strickland’s proposal is testing the extreme limits of the 10th Amendment, Mason Pieklo argues. And if the bill does manage to pass through the Legislature, it could be struck down for that reason. If not? The bill could serve as a boon to the “ever-rightward [shift of] the national framing of state and federal power.”
Texas, we know stupid
I swear, if I could afford it, I'd move out of this state so fast I'd make the roadrunner look like a turtle.
You and me both.
Go fuck yourselves.
1. BIRTH CONTROL DOES NOT CAUSE ABORTIONS
2. Even if it did, you don't get to decide what I do with my body, *I* get to decide
3. It is also not an affront to your religious freedom. Even if you were actually paying for contraception (which you aren't - my labor is paying), there is nothing in Catholic or Protestant Christian tenets that says that you are not allowed to pay for someone else's contraception, only that you aren't supposed to use it yourself.
4. It is certainly not an affront to your free speech. The government is NOT penalizing you for thinking that contraception is bad. You can think and say that until you're blue in the face for all I care. (Hobby Lobby is using freedom of speech as an argument in their lawsuit against the Obama administration.)
5. This is why employer-provided health insurance sucks, because it makes employers think that they get to decide what kind of health I am entitled to and mistakenly believe that they are entitled to paternalistically make healthcare decisions for me
6. They also believe that we are supposed to be gratefully groveling on the floor, thanking them for the generosity to give us health insurance at all.
and best of all
7. How the fuck are you going to give someone a tax break for breaking the law?
birth control
reproductive rights
women's health
Edited at 2013-01-31 10:28 pm (UTC)
If so, I'm thinking the Feds will probably take them to court IF this is enacted into law. At least, I certainly hope so!
2. If I did still live there, I'd be having very pleasant dreams of taking a carpet knife (you know, with that nice hooked blade!) to all these assholes and ensuring that their interest in reproduction of any sort is only theoretical.
(my apologies to anyone who winces at that metaphor)
You have my sympathies.
2. Your metaphor is no worse than my usual: castration with a rusty sardine can lid. I find the additional threat of tetanus to be a nice added touch.
2. OHMYGOD I LOVE YOU! What a GREAT IDEA! :DDD
Just...FUCK. YOU.
I was rooting for you, Tejas!
Ugh, I am so fucking TIRED of these politicians (mostly men) who make it clear that obviously women should stop being such slutty sluts who want to have sex without babies!
or they would be, if these folks actually gave a damn about them once they were out of the womb.