Is The ObamaCare Penalty A Tax?




Let’s see. SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts, on Thursday, June 28, 2012, said that ObamaCare was unconstitutional if considered under the US Constitution’s Commerce Clause. His opinion rejects the federal government’s power to regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. But he did conclude that the ObamaCare mandate is constitutional if considered a tax. So does that mean that if Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Democrats, and Obama supporters deny that the ObamaCare mandate is a tax, do they admit that it’s unconstitutional?

President Barack Hussein Obama has a real problem here. When campaigning in 2008, he said that no one making under $250,000 per year would not see any new taxes.

I can make a firm pledge: No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase – not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes. And my opponent can’t make that pledge, and here is why: For the first time in American history, John McCain wants to tax your health care benefits.

Ironic, isn’t it? Now Obama’s key legislative achievement has become the single greatest legislative deception in American history. By upholding ObamaCare’s individual mandate as a “tax,” Roberts has labeled Obama the largest tax increase President in the history of the country!

Five SCOTUS Justices argued that, while the fine or penalty imposed by the law for not buying health insurance would otherwise be unconstitutional, the fine is actually legal under Congress’ authority to tax. So the fine is officially a “tax” in the eyes of the Supreme Court.

Now White House Press Secretary Jay Carney is contending that the fine is still just a “penalty” rather than a tax. If Carney is correct, that the fine for not having health insurance is not a tax, isn’t he saying that it is unconstitutional. Try as he (and Obama, and his supporters) may, they can’t have it both ways. We have a name for Obama’s, Pelosi’s, Reid’s, and Carney’s current predicament: Catch 22.

My personal prediction is that, in the next weeks, we will hear some really tortured logic (if you can be generous and call their thought processes logic) from Obama, the White House, and the MSM as they try to simultaneously defend both Obama and ObamaCare. In fact, it has already started. Calling it a “tax” causes political problems for Obama, who vigorously fought that label when campaigning for ObamaCare in 2009. Carney said, “It’s a penalty, because you have a choice. You don’t have a choice to pay your taxes, right?” Mr. Carney, can we consider that by not having a choice, we are forced to pay taxes? Carney also said, “It is not something that you assess like an income tax.”

By declaring that ObamaCare must be considered a tax to be constitutional, Roberts has forced the entitlement state to forgo its pretence that government entitlements are, by their very nature, beneficial, and concede the reality that benefits are, in fact, the application of FORCE to take from some to give to others. And that is the definition of a tax.

But that’s just my opinion.

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