By Rebekah Rast
In case you missed the battle last month between Obama and Snooki from MTV’s reality television show “Jersey Shore,” here’s a recap:
Snooki is staying away from the tanning salon and blames Obama for this new disruption in her life.
“I don’t go tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning. [Sen. John] McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on tanning. Because he’s pale and would probably want to be tan,” said Snooki during the second season premier of “Jersey Shore.”
If you are like Obama and claim to not know who Snooki is, you can still sympathize with her outrage over the new ObamaCare tax of 10 percent on indoor tanning salons that went into effect July 1.
This tax is also trickling into small business’ bottom line. A smart-tan poll found that 76 percent of tanning salon business owners believe the tax is hurting their sales.
There is no harm in being boisterous over your opposition to the tax, like Snooki was towards Obama, but there is more you can do to fight against this tax and many more of the 20,000-plus regulations in ObamaCare.
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has launched a new website called ObamaCare Watcher. This website is dedicated to keeping track of the most harmful and damaging regulations tucked inside ObamaCare.
“ObamacareWatcher.org aims to keep the public informed about what is being proposed on the bureaucratic level to implement the national health care system, and to make it easy for activists to submit comments on proposed harmful regulations that will restrict the choices individuals can make about their doctors and their health care,” says Don Todd, ALG’s senior research director.
ALG President Bill Wilson says that aggressive participation in the regulatory process was “essential to keeping the public informed about how the bureaucracy will now be restricting their health care options, and giving them multiple avenues for directly affecting the regulatory process.”
One such avenue of participation people can take is to speak up about their opposition to certain ObamaCare regulations during comment periods.
For example, those who wish to speak up about the 10 percent excise tax on tanning are allowed to do so for about another two weeks—until 11:59 p.m. on September 13. On ObamaCareWatcher.org, people can click “comment now” to submit their thoughts on certain regulations. These comments go directly to the agency responsible for developing the regulation. In the case of the tanning tax, your comments would go directly to the IRS.
“As the regulatory process unfolds, one of the goals in generating public awareness of the new rules is to build support for repealing ObamaCare. When the public learns how much discretion has been given to faceless bureaucrats to make decisions about life and death, they will want the power over those decisions to be restored to doctors and patients,” Wilson says.
The ObamaCare Watcher website is a way the public can hold accountable those who continue to try and expand government intervention in the health care system. After all, the harmful regulations included in ObamaCare don’t stop with the tanning tax.
ObamaCareWatcher.org also highlights a recent rule by the Obama Labor Department where the Obama Administration admitted that up to 69 percent of all existing employer health plans will cease to exist by 2013. These plans will lose their grandfathered status under the law and regulations.
Wilson notes that this rule violates Obama’s pledge that “if you like your health plan you can keep it.”
As ObamaCare Watcher digs deeper into the health care bill and brings attention to discrepancies, like the rule by Obama’s Labor Department, the public will then know the truth and be able to evaluate whether or not they want to speak out about it.
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said before the bill’s passing, “pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it.”
ObamaCare Watcher is doing just that. It is reviewing the thousands of pages of new proposed regulations from various federal government agencies and departments, all while allowing the American people to voice any concerns they might have along the way.
Rebekah Rast is a contributing editor to Americans for Limited Government (ALG) News Bureau.
