It's A Penalty! It's A Tax! No, It's Obamaman, The Middle Class Tax Hiker!

M2RB:  Five For Fighting

"I'm more than a bird: I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie*
About a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd:  but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed:  but won't you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me."

- Obamaman 

*  Like that has ever been difficult for ya, Chump.

On the first day of oral arguments, Solicitor General Donald B Verrilli, Jr, argued on behalf of the Obama Administration that it fine imposed on an individual for failing to obtain health insurance was a PENALTY. The next day, he argued that it was a TAX.

"General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back, and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the court ever held that something that is a tax for the purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?"

- Justice Samuel Alito, 26 March 2012

"No."

- Solicitor Donald B Verrilli, Jr, 26 March 2012

**eyeroll** 

On the next day, this colloquy occurred between Chief Justice John Roberts and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli during oral argument on 27 March 2012:

GENERAL VERRILLI: … it seems to me that not only is it fair to read this as an exercise of the tax power, but this Court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power, if it can be upheld on that basis.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Why didn’t Congress call it a tax, then?

GENERAL VERRILLI: Well –

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You’re telling me they thought of it as a tax, they defended it on the tax power. Why didn’t they say it was a tax?

GENERAL VERRILLI: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objectives. But it is in the Internal Revenue Code, it is collected by the IRS on April 15th. I don’t think this is a situation in which you can say –

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that’s the reason. They thought it might be more effective if they called it a penalty..

"I want to provide a tax cut for 95% of Americans. If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you will not see a single dime of your taxes go up.  If you make $200,000 a year or less, your taxes will go down."

- Barack Obama, 7 October 2008




        "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...  you will not see ANY of your taxes increase ONE SINGLE DIME."
       
— Barack Obama, Dover, NH, 12 September 2008  

“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… My critics say everything is a tax increase.  My critics say that I'm taking over every sector of the economy.  You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we're going to have an individual mandate or not, but... I absolutely reject that notion (that the mandate penalty is a tax).”

- President Barack Obama, 21 September 2009

 

"The mandate is not a mandate.  It is a tax."

- SCOTUS, 28 June 2012 

According to the CBO, 75% of those forced to pay the Obamacare Tax will be in the "middle class."

Held: The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part. 648 F. 3d 1235, affirmed in part and reversed in part.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court ...


2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.

The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce."

Nor can the individual mandate be sustained under the Necessary and Proper Clause as an integral part of the Affordable CareAct’s other reforms. Each of this Court’s prior cases up holding lawsunder that Clause involved exercises of authority derivative of, andin service to, a granted power.

www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/11-393c3a2.pdf

  

"Some supporters have argued that other social programs in the past were controversial at first before becoming embedded in American society. But polling suggests that is not so.

Social Security was popular from the start, supported by 73 percent of Americans in early 1937 and 78 percent the next year in Gallup polls. Medicare had the approval of 62 percent in early 1965 and 82 percent by the end of that year in Harris polls.

By contrast, just 32 percent supported the Affordable Care Act when it was approved in March 2010, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll. As of a month ago, 34 percent supported it, virtually unchanged. To be sure, about a fifth of those who oppose it say it did not go far enough, essentially frustrated liberals."

- New York Times, 29 June 2012

"Superman (It's Not Easy)"

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
I'm just out to find
The better part of me

I'm more than a bird:I'm more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It's not easy to be me

Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see

It may sound absurd:but don't be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed:but won't you conceed
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It's not easy to be me

Up, up and away:away from me
It's all right:You can all sleep sound tonight
I'm not crazy:or anything:

I can't stand to fly
I'm not that naive
Men weren't meant to ride
With clouds between their knees

I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me

It's not easy to be me.