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.
