Welcome to Planet Earth, Sen. Stabenow

Finally, bipartisanship in Washington.

Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow has suddenly noticed – THREE YEARS after she approved Obamacare – that the act punishes medical device-makers with job-killing taxes.

Michigan’s junior senator joined 17 other Democratic U.S. Senators and senators-elect in signing a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week calling for a “delay in the implementation” of the medical device tax in Obamacare, reports the Wall Street Journal.

We’re not making this up. Republican and small businesses have been screaming about the 2.3 percent excise tax – effecting companies like Michigan-based, Stabenow-constituent Stryker (not that you would know reading the press) which has laid off 5 percent of its workers to compensate for its $100M tax bill in 2013.

“The medical technology industry directly employs over 400,000 people in the United States. . . . (The) industry has received little guidance about how to comply with the tax – causing significant uncertainty and confusion for businesses,” reads Stabenow’s letter. “We urge you to support delaying enactment of this provision in a fiscally responsible manner.”

Welcome to Planet Earth, senator.

Meanwhile, she still insists that a hike in income taxes on those making over $250,000 a year – that is, a tax hike that will hammer small businesses - is good for the economy.

A House Small Business tax subcommittee estimates that President Obama’s 5 percent hike on 940,000, small, so-called Subchapter S companies would levy $500B in tax increases and cost 700,000 jobs.

How to explain this dissonance? Democrats are the Party of Big Business.

Corporations like Stryker employ high-paying lobbyists in Washington to get senators’ attention. The small business community – individuals mostly pay Subchapter S taxes – have no such clout. “Democrats sent their letter to Reid less than three weeks after dozens of medical device industry executives ‘swarmed’ Capitol Hill in a lobbying push that resulted in more than 60 different meetings with legislators,” reports The Daily Caller.

Like the Obamacare battle that pitted Big Hospital against doctors and Big Insurance against small clinics, Stabenow chose the Big Boys. But now Big Medical Device doesn’t like Big Hospital’s Obamacare. What is a Democrat to do?