ObamaCare Is No Prescription For US hiring

Never has a president been so happy to have his signature piece of legislation be defined as a “tax” as President Obama was last week, when that designation created enough room in Chief Justice John Roberts’ mind to craft a means that allowed ObamaCare to stand.

But that three-letter word could come to haunt Team Obama this November, and in more ways than one.

Yes, ObamaCare is indeed a tax — the biggest and most complex in US history — but the tax that will penalize those Americans who refuse to buy insurance may not be the most insidious one in this law. It’s the tax on jobs, full-time ones, at millions of small businesses.

That’s because although America’s small businesses have long dreamed of true health-care reform that would ease the burden of soaring insurance costs, ObamaCare is loaded with new taxes and paperwork that will have the direct effect of raising the cost of doing business for these small companies.

It couldn’t come at a worse time. Although small businesses account for an estimated 64 percent of new hires in this country, they have been much slower than big companies to recover from the Great Recession.

The number of new businesses being created in America is down 23 percent from its peak in 2007, according to the Brookings Institution, and confidence among small-business owners, which topped out in 2004, has never recovered.

ObamaCare is a big reason small business has been trailing the overall economy in jobs growth.

ObamaCare does and will continue to raise unemployment in a country that has not seen the jobless rate fall below 8 percent during the Obama presidency. Under the law, small businesses who employ more than 50 people will be mandated to purchase insurance for their employees or face a $2,000 penalty (tax) on every incremental worker they hire.

Read Terry Keenan's full column at NYPost.com