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 Obama’s 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 don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Even Politico has to rebut this to maintain their “credibility”.
Obama is a fool and a liar
Puhleez, Obama. Even if the word “tax” were not used, an unfunded mandate is a tax. Period.
This is sort of like the stupid view that “death panels” were not in the bill because those exact words were never used. Duh.
I guess Obama has never read Orwell’s 1984, either.
You all are such racists! The man said it’s not a tax, and you will believe! /sarc
He spent Sunday morning proving exactly that.
Too bad he didn’t go on Fox and get Chris Wallace grilling his 1/2 white arse.
The Bam is trying to schmooze and bamboozle us all into a ‘Healthcare Bill’ so he can get the credit. The facts and details be damned where the devil does the work.
Too bad Stephanopolis and the President hadn’t read the bill, or perhaps Obama means “it depends on your definition of the word tax”. That sounds familiar.
Why don’t they use the correct word – extortion?
Enforced by the IRS is it not?
why do we think Mr. Wilson called Obama a LIAR? because either obama did NOT read his own bill or he is LYING.
Is Senator Baucus all right? I think someone in the White House just yelled, “Off with his head!” It’s not as though I care a *lot*, but he’s reportedly as honest as anyone in Congress can be.
“War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”
George Orwell was right. He just predicted it would happen 25 years earlier than it did.
ping
Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year". Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar. This suits the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim is to make any alternative thinking — "thoughtcrime", or "crimethink" in the newest edition of Newspeak — impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."
What the bill says, pages 167-168, section 401, TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE:
‘‘(a) TAX IMPOSED.—In the case of any individual who does not meet the requirements of subsection (d) at any time during the taxable year, there is hereby imposed a tax equal to 2.5 percent of the excess of—
(1) the taxpayer’s modified adjusted gross income for the taxable year, over
(2) the amount of gross income specified in section 6012(a)(1) with respect to the taxpayer. . . .”
EVALUATION OF THE PASSAGE:
1. This section amends the Internal Revenue Code.
2. Anyone caught without acceptable coverage and not in the government plan will pay a special tax.
3. The IRS will be a major enforcement mechanism for the plan.
I find it amusing that the MSM is focussing on the Baucus bill in this regard, yet the same tax is included in the House bill. There is also a similar tax levied on businesses that don't provide acceptable health care coverage.
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