Obamacare was to be the signature legislation for Barack Obama. However, it has been somewhat bitter-sweet for the liar-in-chief. While the mandate was upheld, it was not upheld under the commerce clause but under Congress’ authority to tax. Immediately the White House liberal talking head went out on que claiming the mandate was not a tax, but a penalty. For Obamacare to be declared a tax in an election year would mean certain doom for the Obama campaign, so they are lying as much as they can in hopes that if they say it enough people will believe it.
Nancy Pelosi “met the press” this past weekend and also claimed the mandate was a penalty.
Then there is Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign. He appeared on CNN Thursday morning with Soledad O’Brien and was asked, “What does he (Obama) believe?” in regards to the Supreme Court referring to the mandate as a tax.
Labolt claimed that Obama disagreed and affirmed that Obama thinks “That it’s a penalty.” LaBolt also continually said, “You saw our arguments before the Court.”
The Washington Examiner reported,
At that point, O’Brien pointed out that the Obama administration’s solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, argued before the Court that if the justices chose not to find the mandate constitutional under the Commerce Clause, they could still uphold it because it is a tax, and Congress has broad power to levy taxes.
LaBolt then denied that the administration had ever made such an argument. “It never referred to it as a — it never referred to it as a tax,” LaBolt said. “It said that it was a penalty. And that’s under the section of the law that is the tax code, but it said very specifically that it’s a penalty.”
Labolt is not the first and certainly won’t be the last. In fact, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, in a huff exclaimed,
But if I could just add as a matter of policy, it is simply a fallacy to say that this is a broad-based tax. That’s not what the opinion stated that was authored by the Chief Justice. The Affordable Care Act is constitutional under Congress’s taxing authority, but this is clearly a penalty that affects less than 1 percent of the American population.
Look, it’s a penalty. It affects 1 percent, and perhaps less, of the population. It is a — I don’t know about you, but you don’t get to choose whether you pay your income taxes — most people don’t. I certainly don’t. This is not a tax in that sense at all. It is a penalty you pay if you fail to buy health insurance but can afford it.
So now the White House is not only lying about what the mandate is or is not, they are now lying about what the Chief Justice called it. Don’t believe me? OK, here’s what the Chief Justice actually wrote:
Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. See §5000A(b). That, according to the Government, means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS. Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within Congress’s constitutional power to tax.
Say it isn’t so! I’m sorry it is so. The mandate is a tax, no matter what the liberals would have us believe and the guy that gave it to them, Justice Roberts, called it a tax in black and white for all to see. I suggest some of these reporters start quoting this little section to the White House and some of these Obamabots and let’s see them squirm and look for an answer, especially Carney. That guy must have to change shirts several times a day, because you know he is sweating bullets about all of this.
