Obama Administration Admits He Lied - Health Care Reform is a TAX!!!

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama insists that requiring Americans to get health insurance does not amount to a tax increase.

President Obama says requiring people to have health insurance is not the same as raising their taxes.

In a testy exchange on ABC's "This Week," broadcast Sunday, Obama rejected the assertion that forcing people to obtain coverage would violate his campaign pledge against raising taxes on middle-class Americans.

"For us to say you have to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," Obama said in response to persistent questioning, later adding: "Nobody considers that a tax increase." - CNN Story

The Justice Department is defending penalties in the new health care reform legislation for those who fail to buy or acquire insurance as taxes even though President Barack Obama has adamantly denied they're anything of the sort.

"That's not true," Obama insisted in an interview with ABC News last year. "For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase."

However, in a 79-page legal brief filed in federal court in Pensacola last night and aimed at tossing out a lawsuit brought by 20 state attorneys general, the Justice Department did argue that the penalty can be viewed as "a tax" and as part of Congress's "taxing authority."

However, that was not DOJ's main line of argument on the penalty, but a fallback. The main argument is that the Constitution's Commerce Clause gives Congress the authority to impose such a penalty in order to reform the health insurance market, make coverage more available, and reduce free-riding on the system. That said, the Obama administration seems to have decided that mounting a robust defense against the lawsuit is more important than insulating the president from another round of political attacks, so the tax arguments were thrown in as well. They are arguably less controversial than the Commerce Clause claims, though many legal experts believe the suit is unlikely to prevail on any of its various grounds. - Politico Story