Since late 2017, leading up to today, we’ve written or shared at least twenty-three articles opposing HB628, the so-called Family Medical Leave Act. This makes (at least) twenty-four. Why so many? Until very recently neither the governor nor Republican Majority leadership had made a noise that wasn’t fawning.
And while a recent joint committee vote to ITL the bill has people singing praises, until the floor vote adds a final stake (at least for this session) I’m not convinced it’s dead with good reason.
Previous committee testimony made every point we’ve made here, and not just because we published reports written by State Reps or activists who dug into the weeds or testified. But the NH House repeatedly advanced HB628 and the idea of Family Medical Leave Insurance (FMLI) despite committee reports to the contrary or how treacherous we declared its passage to the NH Advantage or politically to so-called Republican supporters.
Did I say Republican supporters?
There were and are a lot of those, most of whom are either ideologically Democrat or vote the way leadership leans – meaning they lack any personal convictions. Republican leadership had been leaning in favor, some say to the point of pressuring reps to support it, and I’m not convinced this has changed. But that’s not our biggest problem.
Democrats want this so badly they will say or do anything to make it so and should they manage to procure a majority in either chamber or take back the governor’s office the transitioning genderless bride of HB628 will be knocking on your paycheck’s door in 2019. And that is bad for New Hampshire.
HB628 is an administrative disaster. A matter for ideological niggling in most of the mainstream reporting. But none of that matters. It makes no difference if the definition of the taking in HB628 is voluntary or if you have to opt-in or opt-out. The words “insurance,” “family,” and “leave” are a smokescreen. HB628 is a progressive bill whose real purpose is to create and fund 45 new state employee jobs at the cost of roughly four million dollars per year. To do what? Manage the distribution of income the state takes from your salary.
This is why New Hampshire Democrats don’t care about the flaws (much like ObamaCare at the Federal Level) because it permanently empowers the state and expands it in ways that will be nearly impossible to contract.
It makes no difference how they get there from here.
The “we can fix it later” narratives underscore the inevitable mission creep of the new department. Fix it means to expand the size and scope of the taxing power created by HB628 regardless of whatever else surrounds it.
The poor design, the difficult language, the indifference to viability. Sauce for the bureaucratic Goose.
This is at the heart of my ongoing and persistent objection to the vehicle (HB628) and my concern about Republicans who support it.
HB628 was never about creating a plan to provide Family Leave Insurance. It is a tax parasite. So when the Concord Monitor, in what is actually a relatively well-balanced report on the myths and realities of HB628 fail to mention it, I’m not surprised. No one did.
And to date, this poison pill provision continues to go unmentioned outside the alternative media or the liberty and conservative social-media.
So many bills, so little time?
This isn’t just “some bill” hiding in a pile. HB628 always funded a new multi-million dollar division of state government created to extract income from people’s paychecks.
Everyone who claims to favor the New Hampshire advantage, the no broad-based tax pledgers, and their political camp followers, should have beaten that drum from go but most of them, and it can’t be stated too often or to loudly, had little or nothing to say.
Why?
Democrats want the 40+ new state employees (a number that will never go down feeding off a budget that can only grow) and the mechanism to tax income when future budgets are deliberately written for which ‘revenue fails to meet estimates.’
What did Republican supporters want?
Why would they destroy the New Hampshire Advantagevnatage to get it?
And do they still want that? Because HB628 isn’t dead yet and there is a high probability that this or something like it will return until Democrats get what they want. A way to collect a new broad-based tax, by any means possible.
