You'd Have Better Luck Teaching the Pig to Whistle

Megan McArdle on those billion-dollar charges big corporations are being forced to make under Health Care Collectivization, and Henry Waxman’s resulting temper tantrum:

And now a bunch of companies with generous retiree drug benefits have announced that they are taking large charges to reflect the cost of the change in the tax law.

Henry Waxman thinks that’s mean, and he’s summoning the heads of those companies to Washington to explain themselves. It’s not clear what they’re supposed to explain. What they did is required by GAAP. And I’ve watched congressional hearings. There’s no chance that four CEO’s are going to explain the accounting code to the fine folks in Congress; explaining how to boil water would challenge the format.

It’s not the format that’s challenged; it’s the Congressmen.