Up North Progressive

Michigan’s next congressman for the first district, Jerry Cannon, is doing very well in the polls against a tea party congressman from the class of 2010 who barely won re-election in 2012. This has Republicans alarmed enough they put some money into a negative attack ad against Jerry using an ostrich.

Because a man who served his country in Vietnam and Iraq hides when he encounters danger. The blatant disrespect to the Brigadier General is bad enough, but this is an ad created by the National Republican Congressional Council, a group that wants obviously to keep Congress a Republican majority. Republicans these days seem to have no depth they are unwilling to plunge when showing disrespect.

The ad attempts to make it seem as though Jerry Cannon refuses to be better informed about what small business owners will face when they have to offer health care options to employees under the Affordable Care Act. In the local Escanaba paper, The Daily Press, On January 15, 2014 (Pay attention to this date, it’s important), Jerry admitted he was unaware what small businesses faced with implementation of The Affordable Care Act:

When asked about the economic impacts of the Affordable Care Act on small businesses, Cannon claimed that he was unaware of any difficulties small businesses may have understanding their requirements for being compliant with the law.

“I’m sure there are experts out there in the field, Navigators or whatever you want to call them, (they can ask) ‘how does the company deal with this?'” he said.

Shocking! And then, Jerry Cannon goes on to say even more:

Cannon noted he believed the adjustment period would be turbulent for small hospitals, which play major roles in local economies.

“We need to stop the attack on small rural hospitals and critical access hospitals. Those are – I’m not sure about here, but in many of the counties in this district – are a major employer,” said Cannon.

Cannon views the transition as leading to “a new way of doing business” with greater emphasis on technology and collaboration.

“You’ve got to take advantage of technology. You’ve got to modernize the billing system. You’ve got to standardize all these things. That’s why all these hospitals are networking and merging, because when you’re bigger you can make more of those things more affordable and able to happen,” he said.

While Cannon recognizes that there is a push to have the Affordable Care Act repealed, he believes that working together to fix and implement the law despite political differences is the only solution to any issues that may have arisen following the law’s passage.

“We’ve been working on this for 100 years and a lot of these ideas started with the Republican Party and there’s been fits and starts and stops about how to get this done and it’s finally put into place, and the worst thing that could be done is say ‘let’s throw it all out,'”

For a man who the NRCC is trying to paint as someone woefully unaware, Jerry Cannon seems pretty aware that there could be some potential issues with implementing the ACA for small businesses, especially hospitals in his district.

The NRCC ad then goes on to quote a report about health care costs for small businesses from the National Small Business Association that came out on February 6, 2014:

Has stopped hiring? Small businesses won’t be required to offer insurance under the ACA for another year, small business owners have stopped hiring already? Let’s see if we can find that quote in the report:

Wait, the quote doesn’t say anything about Obamacare, it says rising health insurance costs.

This report is very interesting. 780 small businesses were used in the poll to assess all kinds of things about health insurance, which employees are offered insurance, and how many were frustrated with learning the new rules under the ACA, A majority reported they didn’t fully understand how it would work yet. So small business owners weren’t sure what to expect, but Jerry Cannon has to be an expert on it? Another interesting bit of info about the report states that in 2009 the average cost of health insurance per-employee, per-month was $590. At the time of this poll (November 2013) the cost had gone up to 1,121 per-month, per-employee. Keep in mind, small businesses are a year away from being required to participate in the ACA health insurance program. These rising costs have nothing to do with Obamacare.

Did you notice the dates? The newspaper article is dated January 15, 2014. the NSBA’s report’s date is February 6, 2014. How was Jerry Cannon supposed to read a report that wouldn’t be published for another three weeks? Nobody had read it yet!

And why are we scaring people with an ad telling Michiganians that a third of the businesses in the state aren’t hiring people? Do different Republican committees not coordinate with each other and make sure everyone is on the same page in regards to their message? It seems not, because Rick Snyder’s been taking credit for the work former Governor Granholm, President Obama, and the United States Congress did bailing out the auto industry and saving 250,000 of the 300,000 jobs the Nerd now claims he created.

Which is it, the Michigan economy is in a complete tailspin because over thirty percent of businesses in the state won’t hire more people and it’s all big bad Obamacare’s fault, or the Nerd insisting he’s making more jobs than Michigan wants, because so many of us are still not working full time yet. Fear, confusion, contradiction. Another day in an election year, putting up with the lies of the Republican Party. Do the state and the nation a favor. Elect Jerry Cannon on November 4.