Some business groups, including many health care companies and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support repealing the tax, as do many unions. And several presidential candidates on both sides have said they want it repealed.
But a large number of economists, including Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution, are publicly urging lawmakers to let the tax stand. In a letter sent this month to congressional finance leaders, the economists write that Congress should "take no action to weaken, delay, or reduce the Cadillac tax until and unless it enacts an alternative tax change that would more effectively curtail cost growth."
Speaking from his own experience as a patient, Aaron says that without such a tax, motivating doctors and patients to hold the line on expensive tests is very difficult. House speaker may be the most undesirable job in Washington for Rep. Paul Ryan, but a growing number of backbench Republicans are indicating they would be happy to hold the gavel if Ryan refuses to run.
The field is back open after heir apparent Rep. Kevin McCarthy dramatically quit the race just moments before House Republicans were to vote last Thursday.
Some lawmakers, like Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., and Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, have told their colleagues they are actively considering a bid if Ryan opts out.
Others are being floated by conservative media outlets.
National Review's John Fund wrote that Illinois Rep. Peter Roskam and Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn are "two names [that] keep cropping up in conversations with GOP members."
Blackburn is the only female lawmaker so far who has been floated as a possible contender. Even though marijuana is now legal in four states and the nation’s capital, and medical marijuana is legal in 23 states, being a pot smoker is still enough to get a worker fired in lots of places. It’s different if the big boss is a pot smoker. No one is going to fire him or her except the board of directors, and these days, it really doesn’t seem like pot-smoking CEOs have that much to worry about.
Some business leaders have long advocated for marijuana law reform, including Microsoft mogul Bill Gates and Whole Foods founder John Mackey, both of whom have called for outright legalization. The Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson is so enthused that he says “would invest” in the marijuana industry if he could do so legally.
Some don’t just talk the talk about marijuana legalization, they walk the walk. The recently departed John Sperling of the for-profit University of Phoenix, backed California’s groundbreaking 1996 Prop 215 medical marijuana initiative to the tune of $200,000, and he was back four years later along with financier George Soros and others to kick in $3.7 million to support Prop 36, which helped to reverse California’s prison overcrowding by diverting non-violent drug offenders to treatment.
Also recently departed, Peter Lewis, long-time CEO of Progressive Insurance, was the single biggest individual donor to marijuana and drug reform efforts, kicking in an estimated $40 million since the 1980s, including $3 million to support legalization efforts in places like Washington state in 2012. Lewis has left us, but a new generation of businessmen are stepping up. Facebook cofounders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz contributed $170,000 between them to the barely failed 2010 California Prop 19 legalization initiative, and Weedmaps founder Justin Hartfield has already put $2 million into a fund to legalize weed in California next year.
Advocating marijuana legalization or backing it with financial support is one thing—it is advocacy of a political position on a pressing social issue—but being an actual out-and-out pot smoker is another. But it really doesn’t seem to matter. Here are seven pot smoking CEOs that nobody has gotten around to firing
Some lawmakers are being promoted through anonymous social media accounts.
Last week a Twitter account popped up to draft Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas to run. "Make @RepMikePompeo the Speaker so he can bring people together to advance conservative policy and deliver on GOP promises," the account profile reads. Follower count as of Wednesday: 79. None of them are Pompeo's House GOP colleagues.
Few Speaker picks w/military experience. @RepMikePompeo has used his as a supporter of Air Force Base McConnell & on Intel/Benghazi cmtes I don’t see any historical guarantee that some big revolutionary event will happen. The only thing I’m certain of is that if nothing happens, we are slowly approaching — well, if not a global catastrophe, then a very sad society. Much more authoritarian, with new inner apartheids clearly divided into those who are in and those who are out.
Okay, maybe I should have asked, where would this change come from, if it were to emerge?
It’s not a specific place. I see potential spaces of tensions. For example, you have literally hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of students in Europe who are doing their studies. And they’re well aware that they don’t even have a chance of getting a job.
So this is one stratum. Then I think more and more, this problem of Europe — should there be a wall? Should those outside Europe — immigrants, refugees — be allowed to enter Europe? I’m not a utopian here. I’m not a stupid leftist liberal who is saying, “Oh, you know, horror, people are drowning in the Mediterranean from Africa, we should open our gates to them.” No, that’s stupidity. If Europe totally opens its borders, you would have in half a year a populist anti-immigrant revolution. I’m just saying this problem will grow — those who are in, those who are out.
There does seem to be a kind of upheaval underway —
— I don’t have too high hopes. Like those old, stupid, pseudo-Marxists who claim, “We see the beginning, we just have to wait. The crowds, masses will organize themselves.” No, you can’t beat global capitalism in this old-fashioned way.
You talk about this idea of “capitalism with Asian values,” which challenges the old idea that capitalism and democracy are the only possible partners.
It’s not only this, that we will get more states like China and Singapore, and so on — that is to say, authoritarian capitalism. I think that even in the West where we do have some kind of democracy — and I do acknowledge it’s a real achievement, definitely better than some dictatorial regime — it’s becoming more and more relevant.
That’s for me — I’m very na?ve here — the importance of all these agreements, TiSA and so on. These are agreements which will determine the basic coordinates of our economic and social life, flux of capital money, flux of information for decades to come. And it’s done in secret; nobody controls it. You know, this is where we are moving. The big decisions are done in top secret. They are not even debated. And what are politicians doing? They’re fighting cultural wars, [while] real big economic decisions are simply made by experts in shadows, and so on and so on.
Do you think there are cases where voters have genuine options?
My ironic remark would be here that when voters really do have a choice, it’s usually perceived as a crisis of democracy.