When Is A Tax Not A Tax?
Posted: 2 July 2012 Filed under: Health Care, News, Observations, Taxation | Tags: 2012 Elections, Obamacare, Postaday 2012, SCOTUS 2 Comments »I was not going to mention the health care decision….I was going to let the pundits rattle their brains for the proper spin……but I will have to admit that I did not see the taxation thing coming with the decision…..Judge Roberts has done what he intended….he gave the GOP its talking point for the next week or so…..that being that the was constitutional and that the penalty for not having insurance would result in a penalty would be a form of taxation……
When I heard the ruling I thought it was a win for the prez and that the GOP was having sour grapes and would spin it…..they did as I thought they would ….but the more surrogates roll out and the more the spin turned not from health care but to the taxation thing….I got to thinking….
And so did the Congress……and now they will not admit defeat and work on jobs but rather they will vote and vote on what is a dead subject, at least for now….
But as long as they plan on tapping this decision, the taxation part, I have a counter to their spin…..the Repubs are now saying that the penalty for not having insurance is a form of taxation, right? If you are crazy enough to buy into this argument….what about the penalty for an overdrawn check…..a tax? Or the penalty for parking improperly….another tax? The penalty for speeding, jay walking, etc….are all these taxes?
These are seemingly preposterous questions are no more so than to label the insurance penalty as a tax….I may not agree with everything, or in reality not much….but this line of attack is nothing more than idiotic……. just the lame attempts of the losers in the Obamacare case trying to spin this for the benefit of a candidate that has no position other than he wants to repeal the law…….the same law that he passed and approved for the state he was governor several years before.
I have often called the time from primary wins to conventions as the doldrums of politics….that time when the most moronic stuff is said to stay in the news……yes, I know….it is pathetic….but that is American politics.
The individual mandate was always a tax; one that was waived if you had qualifying health insurance. The Democrats were not acknowledging that fact for obvious reasons. It was the only way that it could be considered constitutional. I’m pretty certain that the Commerce clause was not intended to allow the federal government to force people to engage in commerce that they would normally not.
The Republicans always frame everything that a Democrat does as a tax. Is there really any surprise there?
No surprise…but like I said….auto insurance the penalty for not have is a fine…can we call that a tax also?