Amendments to the White House small business bill that would rescind an ObamaCare mandate that companies track and submit to the IRS all business-to-business transactions over $600 annually failed to invoke cloture 58-42, with Senator Reid voting against it.
Democrats tucked the 1099 reporting footnote into the bill to raise an estimated $17.1 billion, part of the effort to claim that ObamaCare reduces the deficit by $100 billion or so. Small businesses are staring in horror toward 2013, when the 1099 mandate will hit more than 30 million of them. Currently businesses only have to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase from vendors and the like. Under the new rules, they'll have to report the value of goods and merchandise they purchase as well, adding vast accounting and paperwork costs.
Most Democrats now claim they were blindsided and didn't understand the implications of the 1099 provision—which is typical of the haphazard, destructive way the bill was written and passed. As we have reported here and found when we visited Washington in May, most Members had no idea what they were voting on. Some 239 House Democrats voted to dump the 1099 provision in August, and the repeal would have passed except Speaker Pelosi rigged the vote procedurally so it needed a two-thirds majority. She thus gave Democrats the cover of a repeal vote without actually repealing it.
The larger picture reveals that ObamaCare is already under bipartisan siege, and in the same Congress that passed it. The 1099 provision is only one piece, but repealing the law piece by piece may be the right strategy. Sooner or later the whole thing becomes unworkable.
This failed vote reveals clearly who's really on the side of small business.
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