http://politicsalabama.blogspot.com/2009/09/obama-and-tax-increase-that-wasnt.html
To recap, PresBo was asked when "the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. . . . How is that not a tax?" He responded by denying it was a tax and trying to make it sound reasonable.
Now it turns out that even the ObamaCare bill itself calls this a tax!
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27384.html
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.”
It's clear that PresBo is saying whatever he thinks is most likely to win support for his bill, REGARDLESS of what is actually IN the bill. If what he says is true, that's a bonus... but it doesn't appear to matter one way or the other if it's true or not. In this case, he was denying that the bill would tax people, when the bill itself admits it!!!!!
Either this President is willfully lying to the American people about his plans and the content of legislation, or he is so hopelessly out of touch with what is actually happening that we can't trust anything he says about the ObamaCare bill. Either way, we lose if we depend on the man for the "straight dope" about legislation.
Update: Even the AP sees that Obama was wrong when he claimed it wasn't a tax.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090922/ap_on_go_co/us_health_insurance_tax_fact_check
If he doesn't force those without insurance, then those with insurance are paying more. Is that a tax? That is one that every prior administration has been comfortable with....
ReplyDeleteI'd like to hear what you think about this. The truth about the deficit. .http://bit.ly/j40lV In easy to view graphics!
Paying market price for insurance isn't a tax. Being forced BY THE GOVERNMENT to pay a fine if you don't want insurance... now THAT'S a tax. To be precise, the Baucus bill refers to it repeatedly as an "excise tax."
ReplyDeletePresBo denied on Sunday that the bill would increase taxes on "95% of Americans." Obviously, it does... so was he lying, or was he just abysmally ignorant of the legislation? Either way, we can't trust his word on what the ObamaCare bill will or will not do.