Freedom Line Blog

Barack Obama isn’t going to “tax” Americans earning under $250,000 to help subsidize his healthcare overhaul – he’s merely going to “penalize” them, which is apparently something altogether different and palatable.

During this morning’s Obamapalooza tour of the Sunday talk shows (intentionally ostracizing Fox News Sunday, in a most un-Presidential fit of spite), a prevaricating Obama bizarrely insisted that his healthcare reform’s penalty provisions for those without insurance somehow do not amount to a “tax” on Americans earning under $250,000, but rather a justifiable “penalty.”  Throughout a large portion of his interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the two battled over this topic, with a visibly frustrated Obama even reproaching Stephanopoulos for reading Merriam’s definition of “tax” – “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”

Instead of honestly explaining why his plan doesn’t meet this simple definition, Obama descended into pettiness and replied, “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.”

The reason that Obama resorted to this contortion of logic is that he solemnly and repeatedly promised throughout his campaign that he wouldn’t raise taxes on Americans earning under $250,000 by a single dime.  Knowing that he cannot afford his own version of President George H. W. Bush’s “read my  lips – no new taxes” broken pledge, Obama will apparently stop at nothing in his Orwellian campaign of distortion.

Is he lying?  Or is he honestly confused?  Who knows anymore.  But uninsured Americans earning under $250,000 can rest assured that the money they’ll be forced to pay under ObamaCare isn’t a “tax,” it’s just a “penalty.”