Hidden Tax Hurts Just As Much

Investors.com ^ | January 7, 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Health Care: The president swore that the middle class wouldn't get a tax hike. Yet he's pushing Congress to place a levy on high-end medical insurance plans. It's another campaign promise about to be broken.

'Under my plan," candidate Barack Obama said on Sept. 12, 2008, while campaigning in Dover, N.H., "no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

He didn't tell anyone to read his lips then. But the president is about to make a blunder that rivals that of the first President Bush when he broke his "no new taxes" pledge in 1990.

The federal takeover of the nation's health care system that Democrats are brewing up in Washington will have to be financed by someone. The administration wants to put it on the backs of the middle class in the form of a 40% excise tax on the value of health insurance coverage that exceeds $8,500 a year for individuals or $23,000 for families.

This isn't just another soak-the-rich scheme. This is going to hit the middle class — the schoolteachers, the steelworkers, the everyday folks of whom Bruce Springsteen sings so passionately.

That's why House Democrats and labor unions oppose it.

Those who think they'll be exempt from the tax because their health care insurance isn't one that Obama would define as a "super, gold-plated Cadillac" plan are kidding themselves. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the Congressional Budget Office under George W. Bush, says 95% of Americans who are covered by plans that fit into the Cadillac category make less than $250,000 a year.

[cranked]

Hey yo: Barry lied, once again.

[o_zarkman44]

See tag line.

[o_zarkman44]

lost my tag line.oops

[o_zarkman44]

Now we are right!

Obama is the ultimate LIE!