You Lie! (On Taxes)

At his rate, Obama is really going to have to hire some people to edit Internet caches so he doesn't look like such an Ass:

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

-Barack Obama, September 12, 2008

Now check this out from the AP on the individual mandates in the health reform bills:

Both the House bill and the Senate Finance Committee proposal clearly state that the fines would be a tax.

And the reason the fines are in the legislation is to enforce the coverage requirement.

"If you put something in the Internal Revenue Code, and you tell the IRS to collect it, I think that's a tax," said Clint Stretch, head of the tax policy group for Deloitte, a major accounting firm. "If you don't pay, the person who's going to come and get it is going to be from the IRS."

...

In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama insisted that the insurance requirement is not a tax.

"For us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase," the president said. "What it's saying is...that we're not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore.

"Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance," Obama added. "Nobody considers that a tax increase.

"You just can't make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase," he added.

But a Democratic staff description of Sen. Max Baucus' bill calls the proposed fines an "excise tax." Initially, the Montana Democrat's plan called for penalties of up to $950 for individuals and $3,800 for families. But Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said Monday he expects the family penalty to be slashed in half to $1,900.

The House bill uses a complex formula to calculate the penalties, calling them a "tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage." People would report their insurance coverage on their tax returns.

The coverage mandate is part of a political bargain in which the insurance industry would agree to take all applicants, regardless of prior medical history.

"If we're going to have coverage without regard to pre-existing conditions, it makes sense," said economist Roberton Williams of the Tax Policy Center. "Otherwise people will come in the door the day they get sick." He sees no distinction between the requirement to get coverage and the fines themselves.

"The fact that it is imposed on people and they have no choice in paying it, and the fact that it's administered through the tax system all make it look like a tax," Williams said. The center is a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

It wouldn't be the first asterisk added to Obama's campaign pledge on taxes. Earlier this year, he signed a tobacco tax increase to pay for children's health insurance. Even that can be read as a violation of his expansive campaign promise.

Just amazing. He started by saying he will only tax the rich and the first tax increases he puts forward are both highly regressive, disproportionately impacting the lower and middle classes.