If Obama looked on page 29 of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' legislation -- the bill he hopes will enact his healthcare plans into law -- he would have read this line: "The consequence for not maintaining (health) insurance would be an excise tax."
What part of those two words doesn't he understand? The government imposes a raft of excise taxes on all of us: the tires for our cars, alcoholic beverages, jewelry and many other purchases. Now it wants to add health insurance to the tax-revenue list as a penalty for those who do not purchase a product the feds insist you must buy or else face fines up to $950 for an individual and up to $3,800 a year for a family.
The House healthcare bill, which is stuck in a holding pattern awaiting the Senate's version, also makes no attempt to disguise what the mandated penalties are called: a "tax on individuals without acceptable healthcare coverage."
On Sept. 12, 2008, candidate Obama told voters in Dover, N.H., "I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital-gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
But since his election, Obama and his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill have been ignoring that no-tax pledge left and right.
The House-passed climate-change energy bill, pending in the Senate, would essentially impose pass-through taxes on everyone's electric and home-heating bills, the gas in their car and virtually everything else that consumers buy. Obama signed the tobacco-tax-hike bill earlier this year. He plans to raise the two top income tax rates that will fall heavily on small business. All these taxes hit middle-income Americans making far less than $250,000.
Now, Obama may think that a penalty or fine is not really a tax, but that would be duplicitous, say top tax accountants.
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