Posted on 09/21/2009 8:03:46 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Health bill says 'tax' when President Obama said 'not'
By: Chris Frates and Mike Allen September 21, 2009 09:06 AM EST
In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obamas marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is not true that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.
But he could look it up in the bill.
Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.
And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.
The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who dont have insurance and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
A tax is not a tax when it says “tax” if the taxman taxeth the language to tax “tax” into “not a tax”.
This issue could be a problem for Romney. His Mass Health plan calls for mandatory health insurance as well... or else you’re fined.
F&F’s Gretchen Carlson interviewed him this morning (unaware I believe that his plan did similar) and was begging him to call Obama’s requirement a tax. Romney dodged it.
And FWIW, I’m a Romney supporter. But his healthcare plan could come back to bite him in the primaries.
“Just words.”
Didn’t Clinton try to pass off new taxes as ‘investments’ (in the government) by the taxpayers.
It’s the same way they insisted that amnesty wasn’t amnesty just because they called it something else. Well, h*ll we could read and - something they aren’t used to - comprehend their plan. It was amnesty.
It is quite possible to read and understand the bill and also to believe Obama. But to do so requires doublethink.
“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them....To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.” - Orwell
Yes, but the word is “tax” not fine.
Get with the program.
“They need it to be a tax legally because if it were a fine then one would have recourse to challenge it.”
I think I read somewhere in the bill that fees set by the Health Commission were not subject to judicial review. Would that apply here too?
You mean Hussein was LYING? Oh, surely not!
When Obambi says Webster is wrong, by golly, Webster is WRONG. GOT THAT?
So 0bama wants to have his tax cake and ‘eat it’ also; it is a ‘tax’ when a citizen might want to challenge it, but ‘not a tax increase’ when explaining it on TV.
I emailed this to Drudge@drudgereport.com. Don’t know how many thousands he gets in email, but maybe he will see this.
What other contracts can the federal government coerce us into entering merely because we are alive?
It’s evident that almost everything The Bam says is a lie. I think it’s unfortunate that anyone gives this guy any credibility.
My surmise is that, given the sum total of the evidence, the best explanation for his behavior is that he is a radical Marxist and simply applying classic techniques.
I’d rather go to jail than pay their tax; it’s unconstitutional anyway..!
It’s also called post-modernism (another term would be: insanity).
If you don’t pay a “fee”, you don’t normally go to jail...
don’t pay a “tax” ,and you do.
As a caller on Glenn said today...if jail is an option, then demand a jury and lawyer.
Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional
Federal legislation requiring that every American have health insurance is part of all the major health-care reform plans now being considered in Washington. Such a mandate, however, would expand the federal governments authority over individual Americans to an unprecedented degree. It is also profoundly unconstitutional. * * * The mandate’s real justifications are far more cynical and political. Making healthy young adults pay billions of dollars in premiums into the national health-care market is the only way to fund universal coverage without raising substantial new taxes. In effect, this mandate would be one more giant, cross-generational subsidyimposed on generations who are already stuck with the bill for the federal government’s prior spending sprees. * * * The elephant in the room is the Constitution. * * * Taxation can favor one industry or course of action over another, but a “tax” that falls exclusively on anyone who is uninsured is a penalty beyond Congress’s authority. If the rule were otherwise, Congress could evade all constitutional limits by “taxing” anyone who doesn’t follow an order of any kindwhether to obtain health-care insurance, or to join a health club, or exercise regularly, or even eat your vegetables. * * * a tax that is so clearly a penalty for failing to comply with requirements otherwise beyond Congress’s constitutional power will present the question whether there are any limits on Congress’s power to regulate individual Americans. The Supreme Court has never accepted such a proposition, and it is unlikely to accept it now, even in an area as important as health care.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574416623109362480.html _uacct = “UA-2288668-1”; urchinTracker();
“Mandatory Insurance Is Unconstitutional”
It seems that way to me. Otherwise...
how about a mandatory subscription to the NY Times? If you don’t buy one, you pay an excise tax. And that money goes to...the NY Times. Meanwhile, the poor get a free subscription.
Your comment hits home on the two biggest problems I have with this whole “it’s just like car insurance” argument.
First, the federal government doesn’t require you to have car insurance, the states do (and a state could, theoretically, choose NOT to have such a requirement, I believe).
Second, not everyone (or “just about everyone”) has to get car insurance (as the One keeps repeating), only those people who own (and register) their cars. It’s a big stretch to use as a comparison with being required to own health insurance because we each have a body!
What happened to “choice”? And “I should be free to do what I want with my body”? (As so often professed by abortion advocates.) Where’s the outrage now? (crickets)
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