Obama Admin. Argues in Court That Individual Mandate Is a Tax

[Ballygrl]

So it's wasn't a tax until they needed to argue it in court, then it's a tax?

http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/17/obama-admin-argues-in-court-th

Obama Admin. Argues in Court That Individual Mandate Is a Tax

By Philip Klein on 6.17.10 @ 2:04PM

In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax -- even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.

Late last night, the Obama Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss the Florida-based lawsuit against the health care law, arguing that the court lacks jurisdiction and that the State of Florida and fellow plaintiffs haven't presented a claim for which the court can grant relief. To bolster its case, the DOJ cited the Anti-Injunction Act, which restricts courts from interfering with the government's ability to collect taxes.

The Act, according to a DOJ memo supporting the motion to dismiss, says that "no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the person against whom such tax was assessed." The memo goes on to say that it makes no difference whether the disputed payment it is called a "tax" or "penalty," because either way, it's "assessed and collected in the same manner" by the Internal Revenue Service.

But this is a characterization that Democrats, and specifically Obama, angrily denounced during the health care debate. Most prominently, in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama argued that the mandate was "absolutely not a tax increase," and he dug into his view even after being confronted with a dictionary definition:

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but...

OBAMA: ...what you're saying is...

STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.

OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it's a tax increase?

OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.

At the time Obama made that statement, the Senate Finance Committee had just released its own health care bill, which clearly referred to the mandate penalty as an "excise tax." But in later versions, the word "tax" was stripped, because it had become too much of a political liability for Democrats. The final version that Obama signed did not describe the mandate as a tax, and used the Commerce Clause -- not federal taxing power -- as the Constitutional justification for the mandate.

""This is an about face from what is laid out in the law," said Karen Harned of the National Federation of Independent Business, which joined the Florida lawsuit against ObamaCare. "In the text of the healthcare law, the findings for passing an individual mandate specifically rely on the effects of individuals on the national economy and interstate commerce. Nowhere in the findings is the mandate referred to as a tax. The Justice Department is now calling it a tax to try and convince the court not to rule on whether or not Congress exceeded their authority under the Commerce Clause by legislating that all citizens must purchase private health insurance or face a penalty."

Put another way, the administration is now arguing in federal court that Obama signed a massive middle-class tax increase, in violation of his campaign pledge.

[bkg]

Pawlenty did the "it's not a tax... it's a fee" with the MN cig tax...

Didn't go over well.

[JohnnyReb]

"It wasn't a tax before it was a tax."...seems I've seen that kind of thinking somewhere before.

[NHSparky]

So it's wasn't a tax until they needed to argue it in court, then it's a tax?

Because the American people are stupid, frankly.  They're only going to be paying attention when the MSM and the administration are stumping for this and saying it ISN'T a tax, and have already forgotten about it when the administration has to go to court and claim it IS a tax.

[Opfor6]

This is exactly what FDR did with Social Security.

He sold it as a retirement account to the voters and defended it as a tax when it got before the Supreme Court. FDR got away with it and if we don't watch out so will BHO.

Fortunately this is not the Justice Cardozo court of 1937 and maybe the Constitution will be upheld.

[Freeper]

So it's wasn't a tax until they needed to argue it in court, then it's a tax?

Yeah he rejected the notion but, now he accepts the same notion. And we thought Kerry was a flip flopper.