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It's not a lie if you believe it (image: mariopiperni / flickr)
When the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act one political silver lining for Republicans is that the Court effectively declared the individual mandate a tax. The problem for Republicans, though, is that Mitt Romney championed a near identical mandate in Massachusetts. As a result, Republican efforts exploit this tax issue have been extremely awkward.
And in an interview with Jan Crawford on CBS, Romney’s attempt to clear up confusion about Republicans’ new attack on the mandate-as-a-tax didn’t improve the situation. From the CBS News:
Romney: Well, the Supreme Court has the final word. And their final word is that Obamacare is a tax. So it’s a tax. It’s — they decided it was constitutional. So it is a tax and it’s constitutional. That’s — that’s the final word. That’s what it is. Now, I agreed with the dissent. I would have taken a different course. But the dissent wasn’t the majority. The majority has ruled. And their rule is final.
Crawford: But does that mean that the — the mandate in the state of Massachusetts under your health care law also is a tax –
Romney: Actually –
Crawford: — and that you raised taxes as governor?
Romney: Actually, the — chief justice, in his opinion, made it very clear that, at the state level — states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional. And — and as a result, Massachusetts’ mandate was a mandate, was a penalty, was described that way by the legislature and by me. And so it stays as it was.
emphasis mine
Lets go through this weird explanation piece by piece because it has a lot of layers.
When Romney says he agrees with the dissent, which said mandate is not a tax, what Romney means is that he personally doesn’t believe the individual mandate is a tax.
Even though Romney doesn’t personally believe the mandate is a tax, he will now attack Obama for raising taxes because the Court officially declared it a tax. Since Romney feels the Court’s decision is final, Romney thinks it is okay to attack Obama for creating a new tax, dispite the fact Romney personally doesn’t believe Obama created a tax.
Now things get really confusing. Although the law never called the individual mandate a tax, Chief Justice Roberts effectively concluded that if something acts just like a tax, it is tax regardless the name it was given. Yet Romney is claiming his nearly identical mandate is somehow still magically not a tax, even though it acts just like a tax, because he also never called his mandate a tax.
Romney claims his identical mandate is not a tax because it could be found constitutional for other reasons, but that doesn’t change the fundamental legal principle that something which acts just like a tax is inherently a tax, regardless of the name.
Romney’s defense for why his mandate is not a tax is the same defense the Democrats use to claim their mandate is not a tax, but Romney insists only the Democrats’ defense is a lie because of the Supreme Court ruling.
Let’s not forget, though, that on a personal level Romney still believes that the Democrats’ defense is valid because he thinks the Court decided the case wrong. Romney agrees with Democrats that the mandate is not a tax since they did not call it one.
You got all that? And to think some Republicans were worried that Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts would make it hard for him to go after Obama on health care.
18 Comments
Easy one. He’s trying to explain how Obama-care is not the same as Romney-care. Kind like trying to explain how a duck is the the same as a duck.
I hope that Mitt donates his brain to science because it would really be interesting to see how and IF it works.
I apologize ahead of time for this cross-post from my comments to Scarecrow, but it fits here as well;
The necessity, from the republican perspective, of portraying the ACA, written by right-wing think tanks and the health insurance industry’s lobbies as proof of Obama’s deep commitment to socialism requires tactics so convoluted and brazenly dishonest that they threaten to embarrass even the un-embarrassible American political class.
Let’s not go through this weird explanation piece by piece, because it’s not at all useful, or instructive.
It’s just more chasing after an illusory narrative that has by this time become less than useless.
When are we going to stop ‘Ghost-Busting’, when are we going to stop our quest for the ‘Holy Grail’, the ‘Silver Bullet’ ?
When will we realize that we will ‘win’ nothing by ‘beating’ Romney, just as we demonstrably ‘won’ nothing by electing Obama.
We’re all living the results of a failed polity, unified in its service to the wealthy and powerful, operating under the cover of a false narrative of stark polarization.
It’s not the government that Grover Nordquist is drowning in the bathtub, and it’s not just the republicans who are helping him.
It’s all of us whose lungs are filling up with water, and the twisted machinations of the SCOTUS are just the latest place the illusion is wearing thin and threatening to blow the cover of our rulers, and reveal that both ‘sides’ are cooperating enthusiastically in this monstrous crime.
So as I lay here in the bottom of the tub with the last few bubbles escaping from my screaming lungs, the last thing on my mind is understanding the exact nature of convoluted lies told to cover up the crime, I don’t even care which color mask my murderer is wearing, I just want air, I want the torture to stop, and the non-stop coverage of the horse-race blaring from the radio does nothing but cover up the sounds of my struggle.
By all means, attack Romney. Do and say anything but that which holds Obama accountable for squandering the greatest opportunity Democrats had in 30 years to right terrible wrongs our country, our kids and our grand-kids will pay for for decades.
I hope FDL collects on its gifts to the Obama Administration because its reputation and that of its bloggers has taken a huge hit.
I will clarify the issue for everyone here so there is no confusion. In the 90′s Beacon Hills Legislature’s leaders met behind closed doors with the executive directors of the tax exempt public charities, called health care insurers.
They concocted a law which purported to use the “DOR” power to penalize Massachusetts residents who couldn’t afford overpriced health insurance. They then and pitted the inured against the uninsured, never mentioning the tax exempt public charity status, of the insurers and many providers.
Before the law as passed we all said it is a TAX. They all said it is a fee! We said you are wrong and people who challenged the penalty in courts, HAD THEIR CASES DISMISSED! Mitt was told, Brown was told. Kerry and Kennedy where both told this was a “TAX.”
There is no confusion here. The entire law passed in Mass as, a penalty,a fee. They where all wrong. They played a game with words. Mitt said it was a penalty, a fee. We all said you guys are douche bags! You’re cheap suits! It’s the new corporate sponsored “American Life Tax,” because you can’t contol corporations, hence cost!
Anything said to the contrary is a bold faced lie!!!!!!!
“The necessity, from the republican perspective, of portraying the ACA, written by right-wing think tanks and the health insurance industry’s lobbies as proof of Obama’s deep commitment to socialism requires tactics so convoluted and brazenly dishonest that they threaten to embarrass even the un-embarrassible American political class.”
Yeah, it’s the same thing as Democrats portraying Obamacare as a progressive accomplishment.
In my 61 years I’ve seen a lot of politicians come and go. This guy is an enigma. I’ll grant you, on the same stage with Bachmann, Perry, Santorum, andPau, he looked like a rocket scientist. But, standiong out there all alone, he looks like an idiot, a moron trying to take three different positions at once so as not to alientate any voters.
I was just attacking Obama a few days ago. http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/07/02/the-myth-of-the-toothless-president/
The point is to go after everyone in power equally when they do something.
Great post and I hear you. This should be on the front page and not drivel about romney argues it is and is not a tax.
hmm so that is the point. They are all liars, they are all working for the same people, and they are all screwing us. So beyond that not sure what more you need to tell us. But what would be great is if you started writing about ways we can organize and take back this country from these bastards
This whole tax controversy conveniently jumps from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘Z’ in this sense: Obamacare/ACA is not in itself or entirety a ‘tax’. The mandate itself is not a tax. What may be a tax is the penalty applied to those few who choose not to purchase health insurance. As far as I understand, when you refuse to buy health insurance, there is a penalty tax applied in addition to any amount owed on your federal income taxes. Correct?
So, anyone who presently has health insurance through their employment, Medicare, Medicaid, state welfare Medical Assistance, etc., have no worries.
OK,well, now someone needs a master degree beyond comprehension in order to
discover if the thing is a tax or a penalty.
1)Law was wrote by politicians,Obama,insurers and Big Pharma.
2)It was a tax, tax’s idea,hidden tax from the very beginning. Because Dems were scared of the word tax in the papers of the law,such word would make AHCA very unpopular,they changed the word tax for the word penalty,plotting in advance.
3)The first thing lawyer “Verriliculus” says to scotus was: “this is a tax”,it don’t matter if we wrote the word “penalty” in the paper of the law,”this amount of money coming from people’s pockets is a “TAX”.
4)So,the opportunistic,malicious,corporatist judge erased the word penalty
and wrote “tax”.
5)In ink, in the law it was a hidden tax disguised as penalty,the malicious judge REWROTE the law,pleasing Obama and Dems ,declaring that word penalty is equal to the word tax because the law is coming from Congress, a malicious judge playing with semantics,that was all.
6)cONCLUSION: Obama wanted a tax = written law by authors is penalty =
malicious judge erased penalty and wrote = tax.
The States can mandate behavior. Here in California the State law mandates that you:
1) Must wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, or bike.
2) You must wear a seat belt while driving in a automobile.
3) You can not use a cell phone while driving.
4) you can not smoke in a restaurant or bar.
and I’m sure there are many many more. . .
But the Federal government can only mandate that the States do certain things by withholding tax funds from States that don’t do what they want them to do.
Now the Court is even restricting that power.
I don’t think that the Court ruling is saying that this “Tax” is Constitutional, Roberts is just saying for now the ACA is Constitutional because the mandate could by seen as a “Tax” and therefore the ACA is constitutional for Now.
I believe once that tax is paid by someone, and they sue, the Court will find that that “Tax” is Unconstitutional, and therefore the Whole ACA will be thrown out. I think Roberts would like the congress to do that for him, but if they don’t, next time he will.
First, Romney has NO power, he’s a candidate running for office. You know better than I and way more than most, Obama deserves to be reminded of what he’s done as President, it’s disgraceful. If anyone (not being paid to see Obama’s reelected) wants to praise his efforts, I think he/she should at least make cogent arguments.
Second, I’m in the huge camp who believe your coverage of Obama’s HCR passage was the BEST BY FAR I read ANYWHERE and far better than anything presented on TV or in main stream media. But, that was then.
Obama wants to make this election about anything but his record as President. That’s understandable, it’s unrealistic to expect the youth vote who elected him in ’08 to reward him with another term if it’s reminded of what he’s actually done as President.
If you believe you’re presenting issues important to the campaign fairly, thoughtfully and thoroughly, enough said. That’s how you covered HCR, and from my perspective what you’re doing now is not recognizable.
nice read.
I agree, and if you were to post that as some sort of news I’d point out that we are all painfully aware of that too.
The only thing more boring than covering in detail, the horse race that is American politics, is covering the fixed horse race in detail.
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I understand Roberts’s reasoning about the ACA mandate/penalty/tax to be a bit more complicated than DD thinks. Note the interplay of the modals in the following:
(1) The mandate CAN be regarded as a penalty associated with a requirement to purchase insurance.
(2) The mandate CAN be regarded as a tax.
(3) There is no other way the mandate can be regarded.
(4) If the mandate is read as a penalty, it is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
(5) If the mandate is read as a tax, it is constitutional under the taxing power.
(6) If there is a unique way a statute CAN be read under which it is constitutional, then it MUST be read that way, out of deference to the legislative authority. Hence,
(7) The mandate MUST be regarded as a tax (i.e., it IS a tax).
(7) follows from (1) – (6), and all six of those premises are needed to get to the conclusion. But (4) has no analogue with respect to Romneycare, as there is no “Commerce Clause” for the states. So Romney can claim that Roberts’s reasoning does not apply to his Massachusetts program.
Roberts’s reasoning in support of (2) would seem to apply to Romneycare, however. So, at a minimum, Romney ought to admit that his mandate CAN be regarded as a tax, even though it does not have to be so regarded to be constitutional.