their civil war to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. not in six months or one year, but now. sean: wow, a flip-flop like that would make john kerry jealous if you publicly oppose the health care bill you could testify on capitol hill. last week we reported that at&t plans to tick a one billion dollar charge in the first quarter. other companies are taking a hit, john deere will take 150 million dollar write-down. caterpillar 100 million. 3m 90, ak steel 38 million the wall street journal records the list will grow. in an attempt to silence these companies, henry waxman says he will drag them into a hearing to explain how they came up with these figures. i guess dissent is no longer tolerated in america.
their civil war to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. not in six months or one year, but now. sean: wow, a flip-flop like that would make john kerry jealous if you publicly oppose the health care bill you could testify on capitol hill. last week we reported that at&t plans to tick a one billion dollar charge in the first quarter. other companies are taking a hit, john deere will take 150 million dollar write-down. caterpillar 100 million. 3m 90, ak steel 38 million the wall street journal records the list will grow. in an attempt to silence these companies, henry waxman says he will drag them into a hearing to explain how they came up with these figures. i guess dissent is no longer tolerated in america.
believe a reasonable investor could consider that material information. that s the test. we don t make the rules, u.s. gap requires we take the gap in the earnings in which the law changed. we made the disclosure last tuesday. we should say this is this new feature where you re not able to write off what you provide in terms of drug benefits to retirees, goes away next year. so by rules that were put in place by congress, no doubt, you have to report this sort of stuff. now they re coming back to demand some others who they the same and spell out the numbers, you know, bring supporting documents and email. what do you think of that? well, it strikes me as odd to say the least. i think again all these other companies, those i heard of called to testify, have to to similar rules as we do at ak
would be a hit on you and for a company your size, even though ear among the larger steel companies by sales, you woulding hit significantly? we had indicated in our 10k some general wording along the lines of the potential impacts of federal healthcare legislation could adversely affect the company s financial condition through increased costs and indeed the legislation has impacted us. and i just if i could, take the opportunity to be clear about one thing. that is that ak steel s disclosure on the tax effect of the healthcare reform bill was no way a political statement. we re a fortune 500 publicly traded company on the new york stock exchange and which disclosed our noncash special charge, $31 million, 100% in accordance with the counting rules and we did so because we
steel under u.s. gap. it s a bit odd. i think all of us are very concerned in the private sector about how this is going to be paid for and we re beginning to find out. for us, at ak steel we want to continue to control our costs. we re a globally competitive steel maker and want to stay that way. we look at what we can do in every aspect including employee benefits. there s nothing for us as we look at this bill that causes us to get happy in any way with respect to costs. our costs are going to go up. we re going to cover more people. neil: they say the opposite in congress and the president, that over time, your costs will go down. you re saying you crunched the numbers and your accountants and that s not the case? if you look at the bill we re still trying to read and understand the implications and new things come to light.