George Stephanopoulos interviewed White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew. Lew refused to call the individual mandate for health care a tax, continually referring to it as a “penalty” or “charge,” despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that it should be considered a tax. Here is the interview in part. …….
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you do concede, you keep wanting to use the word penalty. You do concede that the law survived only because Justice Roberts found this to be a tax?
LEW: I – I think if you look at the decision, which is a very complicated one, there are arguments that support different theories. There were…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the argument of Chief Justice Roberts is that it’s a tax.
LEW: He – He went through the different powers that Congress has and found that there is a power, whatever you call it, to assess a penalty like this.
STEPAHNOPOULOS: He called it a tax.
LEW: (no response)
STEPHANOPOLOUS: So you’re conceding that?
LEW: I’m saying that it was set up as a penalty for people who choose not to buy insurance, even though they can afford it, and for that one percent, we call it fair.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And he calls it a tax.I’m going to move on…
Lew’s argument is in line with what President Obama told me in a Sept. 2009 interview on “This Week,” when he insisted that “to say that ‘you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance’ is absolutely not a tax increase.”
More reality denying leftist drivel.
Read more here.
Barack Obama emphatically said he would not raise taxes on anyone making “less than $250,000.00″. The Supreme Court has said Obamacare is a tax. So President Barack Obama must discard ObamaCare. If it is not a tax then the Supreme Court would not have passed it. The Obama camp is saying it is not a tax.
If it is a tax, or, if it is not a tax, either way, ObamaCare does not stand.
Video of Barack Obama saying he will not raise tax on anyone making “less than $250,000.00″. (He also says he will cut wasteful spending. This he did not do with Solyndra.)
I’m not sure we’ll be able to use that for anymore than a “Read My Lips” application. But, this illustrates the difficulty. We can’t confront leftists with reality. They simply refuse to acknowledge it.
November is the only way ObamaCare can go away. Then, after we repeal it, we have the much greater task of having the SCOTUS assert that proclaiming something as a tax doesn’t inherently lend to constitutional validity.
Anyone, literally anyone, that understands the intention of the Founding Fathers knows that they wanted as little taxation as possible. You only have to learn as little as the story of the Boston Tea Party to get an introduction to that. John Roberts seems to have trouble understanding the Constitution. He called this behemoth tax rise Constitutional. Not only does ObamaCare need to be repealed but John Roberts needs to be removed. I’m not optimistic for either.
Agreed on all counts. I can appreciate others trying to find the silver lining in the judgment, but, this hurt.
People on the Right of politics have been saying for decades that Roe v Wade was a poorly thought out decision and it should be overturned because that. But it still has not been. Obamacare may follow that same path. Thanks a lot John Roberts. Maybe a bumper a bumper sticker saying, “Obama/Roberts raised my taxes” should be made.
The only thing I can see happening is individual States saying they will not implement it—and that would be Constitutional. The Constitution, as it was originally written, gives individual States the right to do that. So there’s hope—unless Washington uses some mutation of the meaning of the 17th Amendment to force States to implement it. I have confidence Barack Obama will do anything he can imagine to force Sates to implement it. The man hates individuality.
Ideally, Obama will be gone before that issue can be resolved. But, yes, there’s a reason why the Constitution refers to the states as sovereign.
Governor Scott of Florida says he won’t play the game. He’s not going to increase Medicaid, nor set up “insurance exchanges.” Going to be interesting to watch the showdown. If enough States refuse to along……..it’s time to take a stand!
It is….. there are several other Governors lining up the same way.
suyts says:
July 1, 2012 at 12:38 pm
But, this illustrates the difficulty. We can’t confront leftists with reality. They simply refuse to acknowledge it.
I’m not so concerned about leftists. Leave them in their fantasy.
Just present it to the public. I trust enough of the population still remembers a day when there was lower taxes and less intrusion from the government. And they can vote.
Exactly. It will just take a force of will and persistence.
“There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.”
So she called it a carbon price instead. Democrats – you could learn something from a certain Welsh class action laywer in legal doublespeak. Just never talk to John Roberts.
There is an uncanny similarity to the double-speak utilized.
Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and Lew, pay attention…
If the SCOTUS says the only way the individual mandate can stand constitutionally is if the penalty is a tax then it is a tax. It’s going to be collected by the IRS. So, what it is that the IRS collects? That’s right… TAX!
Let me help you get over your psychotic break with a little group therapy. Repeat after me… It’s a TAX, TAX, TAX! There, it’s not so hard to say. It’s easier for the public to understand too. The more you deny it is a tax, the more the Republican voting base will flock to the voting booth with the intent of shoving your new TAX on the middle class up your collective wazoo.
Lol, yes, they will.
George Orwell had it nailed when he wrote in 1984 about the newspeak term: doublethink–the concept of holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously. Is it a tax or a penalty? Well, it’s both and neither.
The administration is now trying to spin it as not a tax, even though the only way it survived is by calling it a tax. So I am not surprised by Lew. I am surprised by Stephanopoulos. He actually is sorta doing his job for a change.
There seems to be a bit of animosity between the former Dem administration and the current.
The silver lining in this morass.
Steph is a Clinton man and he probably got the “word” dropped in his ear.
There does seem to be some “friction” between the Obama and Clinton people.