A weekly lunch buffet at one of former President Clinton’s favorite restaurant haunts has reportedly been done in by Obamacare.
“We regret we had to make this decision but unfortunately we face new expenses as a result of the healthcare reform and the Friday Buffet, though wonderful, was not profitable and required extra staff which we can no longer sustain,”
The Daily Caller reported, citing a notice on the Filomena restaurant’s website.
The Friday buffet ended Jan. 1.
Businesses across the country
have cut full-time jobs to meet the insurance requirements for workers under the Affordable Care Act, and keep costs under control.
Clinton, though
supportive of Obamacare, last November
firmly advised President Obama to “honor” his commitment to let Americans keep their insurance as millions lost coverage because their policies didn’t meet new standards set by the Affordable Care Act.
The Daily Caller reports the restaurant called with an elaboration on its decision, saying:
“Because of the potentially large new expense of offering healthcare coverage to 90 employees, we had to look for areas of operations that were either marginal or losing money to trim expenses or losses and find new areas to increase business so that we could keep all our employees and continue to grow our business.”
“Because restaurants such as ours, 86 employees, are so labor intense the potential expense of offering coverage to so many could threaten independently owned restaurants like ours,” it added. “Our goal is to tackle the problem head on and find ways to pay for it without losing our employees….”
The Daily Caller noted the ex-president’s affection for the Italian eatery has been well-documented, including in the book “Where to Date in D.C.,” which calls Filomena a “personal favorite of President Bill Clinton.”
In 1993, Clinton and then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl talked about how much they liked the place during a meeting in the Oval office, the Daily Caller noted.
“That’s a very good place,” Clinton said, according to The New York Times.
The Hill’s restaurant reviewer reported in April 1999 that Kohl had been “a regular at Filomena for years, ever since it opened in 1983.”
“If you go, be prepared to run into two VIPs munching calamari,” the reviewer wrote.
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