The Obama 2012 campaign appears to have decided it can override the Supreme Court.
On CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien yesterday Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told O’Brien that Obama disagreed with the Supreme Court that Obamacare is a tax.
“He’s said that it’s a penalty. You saw our arguments before the court, and that is his position.”
LaBolt goes on to claim in the interview that Obamacare “actually includes the largest health care tax cut in history,” and that the Obama administration”never referred to it as a tax, it referred to it as a penalty.”
LaBolt might want to reread the transcripts from the Supreme Court hearing on the healthcare law. Obama administration lawyer Solicitor General Donald Verrilli did in fact argue before the Supreme Court that Obamacare is a tax and is therefore constitutional, as O’Brien points out in the interview after LaBolt flat out says that the President thinks that the Supreme Court got it wrong on Obamacare and it’s not a tax because the President says it isn’t.
At the beginning of the interview O’Brien states that Romney says Obamacare is a tax because the Supreme Court says it is a tax, which prompts LaBolt to claim that team Obama are the ones who have been consistent on this issue.
That’s one area LaBolt is correct on. The Obama administration and the Obama campaign have been consistent in their denial of the Supreme Court’s decision that Obamacare is a tax, only acknowledging that it was argued before the court as a tax when forced to confront reality.
Last Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew made a fool of himself on Fox News Sunday by trying to pull the wool over host Chris Wallace’s eyes, saying that the Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional under the Commerce Clause. There is no truth at all to that argument, which Wallace quickly pointed out, “I can’t let you go there,” he said. “It specifically said it is not constitutional under the Commerce Clause. They said it is constitutional under the tax.”
After more back and forth Wallace eventually played a clip of the Solicitor General arguing before the Supreme Court that that the law should be constitutional “as a tax power.”
Yesterday White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters, “It is simply a fallacy to say that this is a broad-based tax.”
Carney, Axelrod and LaBolt all claimed this week that the “penalty” would only affect, ‘the 1 % who can afford insurance but chose not to get it.’
Yes, the awful
8.2 percent of Americans who are unemployed (who can’t afford to buy food, let alone healthcare insurance) – how dare they breathe our air! Or the 14.9 percent of Americans who are underemployed, working at the local Hy-Vee (who don’t qualify for benefits at their part-time job) – who do they think they are?
As O’Brien points out in the interview with LaBolt, President Obama himself has not yet said whether he believes that Obamacare in a penalty and not a tax as the Supreme Court ruled. Various campaign and administration officials have instead served as Obama’s mouthpiece, assuring Americans that Obamatax does not bear any resemblence to a tax, other than the fact that that you are mandated to pay a fine to the IRS – America’s tax police – if you become a “free rider” and a “burden on society” by breathing America’s air without purchasing health care insurance.
They reality is the 12. 7 million out of work Americans will be hit with one of the largest tax increases in American history beginning in 2014 unless Obamacare is repealed (read: unless President Obama is replaced). There’s only so much longer President Obama and his flacks will be able avoid these unpleasant facts.
