In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, President Obama declares that the individual healthcare mandate is NOT A TAX.... Why? Well, just because he said so.
ABC: You were against the individual [health insurance] mandate...during the campaign.
OBAMA: Yes.
ABC: Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don’t. How is that not a tax?
OBAMA: Now what I've said is that if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool, we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...
ABC: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.
OBAMA: No. That's not true, George. For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I'm not covering all the costs.
ABC: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...
OBAMA: No, but — but, George, you — you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase. Any...
ABC: I — I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax — "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."
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.
Yet, racism chasers wonder why some conservatives didn't want the Deceiver-In-Chief to speak to their children. "Listen up children, you can't just make up language -- but I can because I'm the President. What I say goes. If you doubt my definition of ANYTHING and check the dictionary you are stretching. My word trumps Merriam's and Websters. By the way tell your racist parents I'm the President so get over it!"
I can't believe how this man has beguiled a nation. People actually believe he is a genius!
H/T to RightKlik for pointing out the following:
Why don't we just point out the obvious?
Let’s all open up our copy of the Baucus plan and turn to page 29. We find ourselves in SUBTITLE D: SHARED RESPONSIBILITY. And what does the bill tell us will happen if you fail to purchase health insurance?
Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.
14 comments:
Obama is not very bright. He struggles with opposition and claims authority he will never get.
He doesn't realize what mumbo jumbo he speaks. he is not informed on the issues and tells us that he is. he has lied from the begining. He has lied all the way thru and I don't expect he will change.
Someone else is informing him and he's not gettin it - or can't. He has missed the boat on too many issues and is ignorant of MANY more.
If you tell me he is way intelligent - you lie - he is not and why in hell would anyone tell you one thing; do something else and then lie about it. I don't keep friends like that and I certainly would not associate with whoever the pretender is in the oval office.
He's just not that bright, sorry. I'm sick of hearing he is. Watch the tv some more; they want your brains (nod your head up and down, now. that's right. good job).
You know, I have a copy of HR 3200 on my desktop, it specifically states 'tax' for those who do not sign up for health care. For me, with a family of 5, I'm looking at a fine of nearly $3800. Thanks for the 'choice' in this plan for there really isn't any choice at all.
1) That is quite strange, when he said he wouldn't raise taxes on people making $250,000 and more, for some reason it sounded like he was talking about income tax.
2)He said he would not mandate the public option, and he has always maintained that all people must be insured out of fairness to all. Failure to be insured is penalized, only if you can afford to carry insurance. Those that can't will be subsidized.
3) I agree Obama needs to start reading the bills or put his foot his some you know what's. He has laid out what he wants, and all they have to do is write it.
For the record, I am a liberal who cannot stand Nancy Pelosi.
@ Ar:
1) I don't think people understand politics is negotiating. You're not going to get everything you want, and you're going to have to give up something. Obama's version has been watered down so much, that the left base is upset. If he was the psycho liberal like you think, baby, you would be on a single payer system by now, and by force.
2) That's generally what President's do rely on advisers and staff, remember that's how we got into the war with Iraq, relying on others. The reason President's rely on staff is because it's quite hard to the job of legislating, researching while running a country. That doesn't make him "not bright". If you tell me he's not intelligent then "You Lie". While you repeat Joe Wilson, I will have to pull a Kanye and say, "I'm going to let you finish in a moment, but Obama is definitely more intelligent than Bush".
3)Intelligence has nothing to do with thinking like a Conservative. Politics is a game, and you can't win it, if you don't know how to play it. His campaign alone shows the amount of intelligence he has. He's learned from Clinton's missteps, and so he will have to prance to just get a portion what he wants. He is throwing the kitchen sink at the public, just so something will hit. So intelligence he definitely has. This will be the first health care reform bill passed in history.
4) Wow, I know very few people with perfectly highly intelligent friends, only. You are quite fortunate. Tell me something, Do they not sin, too?
Actually, that part of the Baucus plan is what Mitt Romney delivered in Massachussets.
Yes, "Romney-care" is NOT at all popular, only slightly more popular than current MA Governor Deval Patrick.
The incredible costs of U.S. healthcare is due primarily (almost solely) to people having access to too much care, too much advanced care to people who do not/cannot pay for it.
Ironically enough, the part of the U.S. healthcare system that is failing IS the existing "public option." Medicaid is looking at an insurmountable deficit right NOW!....AND Medicare will be flat bust by 2015!
Many, in Massachussets, feared that Romney-care was going to attempt to deliver universal or "free government healthcare." The fear was over, "How will MA pay for that?!"
What Romney-care DID was simply make healthcare as mandatory as auto insurance. Fining those who opted out of health insurance, or those ineligible for Medicaid, or Medicare, who don't buy their own health insurance.
In fact, Obama sounded a LOT like Mitt Romney in saying, "For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore..."
Personally I LIKE that kind of sentiment. We NEED more of it.
What's odd is that when a Reagan or a Gingrich preaches such personal responsibility that's seen as "harsh." If it's easier for some to take when a Democrat says it, that's fine with me, just so long as it's accepted and embraced.
Personally, I've supported an expanded "public option" so long as it were "done right"...and by "RIGHT" I mean a strictly rationed and tightly restricted public option, available for free, and a range of supplemental insurances available to those willing and able to pay the premiums to circumvent that rationing and restricting.
That would (1) take the burden of providing Americans healthcare AWAY from the employers, making U.S. industries and the American worker much more productive and cost-effective and competitive than they are now, (2) save state, local and the federal governments BLLIONS in healthcare premiums AND it would eliminate the hundreds of BILLIONS in untaxed compensation America's workers now get, in the form of employer-drive healthcare...and (3) eradicate the incredible expenditures in healthcare via the rationing and restrictions built into any cost-effective expanded "public option."
Given that the fed has been after all that untaxed compensation almost as much as Big Business has been looking to get out from under the weight of providing over 80% of the American workforce's health insurance, I can't believe it's taken so long to hammer out the details.
The Baucus plan is a step in the right direction, in my view, BUT a rationed and restricted expanded public option WITH available supplemental insurances would probably be the ultimate result, either way.
I understand why republicans and Conservatives oppose this....the same reason the Dems opposed the War on Terrorism - politics, BUT what I find harder to grasp is why liberals support this at all! This isn't going to deliver "MORE free stuff," quite the reverse! It's actually going to impact the poor and the young the most.
"Ironically enough, the part of the U.S. healthcare system that is failing IS the existing "public option." Medicaid is looking at an insurmountable deficit right NOW!....AND Medicare will be flat bust by 2015!" Exactly, JMK. Along with VA, SS, Employee based ins (thanks gov't), and so forth. We've gone around on this and Grapeshit refuses to do anything except spout her agenda for gov't paternalism.
I'll call her bs out again as she helps Obama split hairs on the $250K
It's already well document that Joe Wilson was correct. Read the little hand slap in Congress, even the Dems can't obscure the facts on the taped evidence.
CBW, talk about double speak, you should dig up the foreign interview. More of the same but with interpreters.
Smile~Are you talking about the one he did on Univision? Actually I haven't seen that one. I will try and find it on youtube.
JMK!!!! Where have you been?
"In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, President Obama declares that the individual healthcare mandate is NOT A TAX.... Why? WHY? WELL, JUST BECAUSE HE SAID SO.
As the president went on his marathon speaking tour this weekend, I came across PSALM 12 which jumped out at me because it seemed so fitting for this man and what he is attempting to do.
It says: They speak idly everyone with his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak. May the Lord cut off all flattering lips, and the tongue that speaks proud things, who have said, "With our tongue we will prevail; Our lips are our own; Who is Lord over us?"
But the Lord says: "For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, Now I will arise," says the Lord; "I will set him in the safety for which he yearns."
Because of his pride, and his belief in his own charisma, the president seems to think that he can change people's minds by sheer force of his words. He's done over60 T.V. interviews so far.
In spite of what his supporters say, this healthcare plan and all his other takeovers past, and possibly future, have one goal and will have one result. Gov't control,the oppression of the people. But the Lord says HE will arise, in HIM is the safety(security) that people are searching for and desiring gov't to fulfill. I know God is doing a work even now!! Hallelujah!
This is classic Orwell doublespeak. You hit it on the head. Next he will create the Ministry of Truth and release the Newspeak dictionary. Oh! wait there already is something called realitycheck at www.whitehouse.gov.
It's all bs while they take the rest of it from us. The idea is that america go by by, down the road, jack and don't come back...
The more they distract us; the more they pull over on us. He's perfect for the job. Maybe he is smart...
All the bail outs and spending is so you will have nothing - pay attention to the video. Double speak keeps our minds off what's happening.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5cgOkwW23Y
Hi Robin!
I've had a very heavy workload this summer, tons of overtime and it has impacted my "online time."
You're right Smile, and so was Joe Wilson, about illegal immigrants being covered in the Democrat's Healthcare Reform Bill.
Of course the argument for covering those here illegally goes, "They're already getting free healthcare at U.S. taxpayer expense in our emergency rooms, and this rationed and restricted, bare-bones "expanded public option" would actually limit the level of care such people could get."
After all, it can certainly be argued that we really aren't debating "socialized medicine" in this country, as we already have a variation on "socialized medicine," in the form of our employer-paid healthcare, which currently covers over 90% of the American public.
The vast majority of businesses MUST provide healthcare to F/T employees, so we the people NOW have no real direct, responsibility for our own healthcare (very much akin to "socialized medicine")....AND that healthcare comes as "untaxed compensation."
For instance, almost certainly UTZ, Mrs Grapevine and myself currently get the value of our employer-funded healthcare largely untaxed.
THAT'S why BOTH business and government have long wanted an end to the current (employer-driven) healthcare system.
Their real objections isn't about coverage or those left out, BUT that, (1) it raises the cost of the American workforce in the global market, (2) makes American business and industry less competitive and cost-effective than it otherwise would/should be and (3) "cheats" the government out of hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars in tax revenues on all this untaxed compensation.
That's why I say, "IF done right" a public option would actually do what both Conservatives and Barack Obama claim to want....which IS, as President Obama put it, "What it's saying is, is that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore..."
And, in my view, that was very well put. There isn't a much more Conservative sentiment that can be articulated than THAT.
With that statement, Barack Obama sounded very much like Ronald Reagan or Newt Gingrich!
Again, if done right, a strictly rationed and tightly restricted "expanded public option" would deliver a very bare-bones, cost-effective basic level of care to all and, so long as supplemental insurance were available through private insurers to cover those willing and able to pay for it (that would be the bulk of America's working people) it would make each individual much more directly responsible for his own healthcare.
Those who wouldn't avail themselves of the supplemental insurance could find themselves getting $50/mth pain pills instead of the $4,000/mth chemo to fight their cancer.
The argument against that, of course is that government has NEVER been at all effective at delivering services. From motor vehicle offices, to social service programs, to the Post Office, government has perfected "service with a snarl," while often bringing incompetence to a veritable art form.
ALL true and all the more reason for any reasonable, common-sense endowed individual to avail themselves of the supplemental insurance that would allow them to cicumvent the rationing and restricitions built into the "expanded public option." Besides, is government's ineptitude a reason to argue that American business and industry should continue to be handicapped globally by the ponderous costs of insuring the bulk of he American population?
I think the only ones who've really thought through the REAL repurcussions of a switch AWY from employer-driven healthcare are those opposed to it right now. Those who delusionally dream of getting even MORE "free stuff" don't even get it, even as Ted Kennedy publically extolled rationing of healthcare a mere six weeks before he died, and Barack Obama himself is telling them, "...we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore."
They're the ones who're going to be shocked that "cost-cutting" will take precedence over quality of care in this new "expanded public option."
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