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Political Hotsheet
(CBS News) The health care debate sure has gotten complicated for Mitt Romney in the wake of last week's Supreme Court ruling on President Obama's signature health care law. © 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Romney camp sides with Obama on health care "tax"
With the Capitol in the background, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks about the Supreme Court's health care ruling, Thursday, June 28, 2012, in Washington.
/ (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)A quick recap: The high court found the law constitutional because the individual mandate central to the law includes what the court considers a "tax" on some people who don't buy health insurance - and Congress has the constitutional right to levy taxes. Suddenly deprived of their argument that the law is unconstitutional, Republicans switched their messaging, pointing to that finding to argue that President Obama had forced a massive tax increase on the American people.
The problem? The health care law Romney passed when he was governor of Massachusetts also included a "tax," by the Supreme Court's reasoning, on those who choose not to buy health care. It was even bigger, in fact, than the "tax" in the Obama-backed health care law. As Norah O'Donell put it to House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday's "Face the Nation": "The facts are that the penalty in Massachusetts under Mitt Romney for not buying health insurance was twelve hundred dollars. The penalty under the president's health care law at its highest rate would be about seven hundred dollars. The Massachusetts tax penalty was more restrictive and more punitive than the president's."
Romney not only signed off on the penalty, or tax, but even argued for it in print, writing in a 2009 op-ed: "[W]e established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages 'free riders' to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others." So in arguing that Mr. Obama is a massive tax raiser, Republicans are rather inconveniently arguing their presumptive presidential nominee is one as well.
The White House has countered Republicans' claims that the mandate represents a tax hike by maintaining that it includes a "penalty" - not a "tax" - on the 1-2 percent of so-called "free-riders" who choose not to pay for health care. This morning on MSNBC, the Romney campaign made the same argument - effectively siding with the Obama administration over the Republican Party.
"The governor disagreed with the ruling of the court," Romney's senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said. "He agreed with the dissent that was written by Justice [Antonin] Scalia, which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax." Fehrnstrom later repeated: "The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court's ruling that the mandate was a tax."
Fehrnstrom also said that "the governor has consistently described the mandate as a penalty." He went on to argue that the difference between Romney and the president is that the president did not take that position from the start.
"Let's take a step back and look at what the President has said about Obamacare," he said. "In order to get it past the Congress, he insisted publicly and to the members of Congress that the mandate was not a tax. After it passed the Congress, he sent his solicitor general up to court to argue that it was a tax. Now he is back to arguing that it's not a tax. So he's all over the map."
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LOL!
51 Votes in the Senate. Romney will sign it.
I find both you and your faux "facts" entirely hilarious. Kind of like when my nephew was 4 years old and explained how to build a rocket to me.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/mar/20/romneycare-and-obamacare-can-you-tell-difference/
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/10/11/romneys-advisers-met-with-obama-to-help-craft-obama-care/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/10/11/how-mitt-romneys-health-care-experts-helped-design-obamacare/
Still, Romney will flip-flop as usual:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/05/romney-slams-president-obamas-health-care-law/
http://www.fox11online.com/dpps/elections/president/romney-marks-2nd-anniversary-of-obama-health-law-nt12-jgr_4115042
Obama, come debate time, will either say he was playing chess and using Romney's and the GOP's plans against them, or he will gloss over it. The latter will give more credence to any belief Obama is bought and paid for. It's up to Obama to show his real self. Americans are tired of games, from political and corporate leaders.
Meanwhile, I served most of my time at HHC, NATO/Shape Support Group, attached to the 196th Station Hospital, just outside of Mons, Belgium.
There are very strict requirements that must be met even in order for a person to even be considered for assignment to SHAPE. From other posts that LoudMouth has made, I know that he would have been considered entirely ineligible for such an assignment.
And, of course, the only reason "coffee girl" ever came into his head is because his "job" is "coffee-boy."
I was on my way home from the grocery store (since I don't live in my mom's basement, I have to buy my own groceries) and the local police department has temporary signs all over town with safety warnings for the coming holiday. One says, "Click it or ticket." My guess is that LoudMouth is one of those people who makes it a point to never buckle his seat belt, preferring to pay the fines as a protest rather than be safe.
I got used to buckling up when I lived in Belgium, and just never stopped. They had gendarmes standing on big 55-gallon drums in the middle of intersections. If you drove past without a seat belt on, they radioed ahead a couple of blocks with your vehicle description and license number, and you got pulled over and received your ticket. About the equivalent of $500.
It would have been much shorter to just print I was right, which is the reason I'm not the coffee girl.
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I admit I was still on the fence as to whether you were truly delusional, or just one of those unemployed and extremely egotistical people that still lives in his mom's basement and tries to convince everybody on the internet that he actually has a life and knows everything about everything.
Now I know.
All you have to do to not pay this "tax" us get yourself covered by health insurance. And if you can't afford it, you will get a tax CREDIT to buy it. If you can't afford to pay for it up-front, you will be given an advance tax CREDIT, paid to your health insurance company.
For cryin' out loud, give it up with parroting Rush Limpballs big mouth. People with IQs larger than their shoe size can see right through this kind of nonsense.
Not only is does Romney's wife come across a plastic money grubber, the family is just plain weird. Google "Romney dog on car roof." They put a dog on top of their car for a long trip in a dog carrier. The dog had to of experience 70 mile per hour winds during the trip. Sorry, but that is just plain weird. The guy might be rich, but he is a weirdo.