Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax

So, how does a claim of ‘Interstate Commerce’ powers, become a powers to tax clause?  Well, when the Obama Administation knows that they can’t win any other way.  The people told the Senators and Congressional Members all last summer that they didn’t have the authority to mandate healthcare purchases.  So, now they say they have the authority through their powers to lay taxes.  Can anyone tell me exactly how a taxing authority can force you to purchase anything?  The audacity of this Administration.  They say whatever they think the public wants to hear, and then to turn around and do as they please, is the catalyst of the Tea Party movement.  Until we vote out the wordsmiths and place into the ‘Peoples House’, men and women of integrity, we will continue to get more of the same, no matter what letter follows after their name.

Yours in Truth  ;-)  Shelly

LiveJournal Tags: Healthcare,Taxes,Commerce Clause,Healthcare Reform,Obama Administration,Politics

By ROBERT PEAR

Published: July 16, 2010

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WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.

Administration officials say the tax argument is a linchpin of their legal case in defense of the health care overhaul and its individual mandate, now being challenged in court by more than 20 states and several private organizations.

Under the legislation signed by President Obama in March, most Americans will have to maintain “minimum essential coverage” starting in 2014. Many people will be eligible for federal subsidies to help them pay premiums.

In a brief defending the law, the Justice Department says the requirement for people to carry insurance or pay the penalty is “a valid exercise” of Congress’s power to impose taxes.

Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.

While Congress was working on the health care legislation, Mr. Obama refused to accept the argument that a mandate to buy insurance, enforced by financial penalties, was equivalent to a tax.

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