Freedom Line Blog

It appears that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus failed to get the White House memo about tax increases not being tax increases prior to drafting his latest version of ObamaCare.

During yesterday’s now-infamous exchange with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, President Obama insisted that the provision in Baucus’ bill that taxes families up to $3,800 annually for failing to get health insurance (aka the “individual mandate”) is not a tax increase and therefore does not violate his oft-repeated campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Hat tip to Chris Frates and Mike Allen of Politico for pointing out that the first sentence of Page 29 of the Baucus bill reads: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”

But that’s not all. According to Frates and Allen:

And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: ‘The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.’

So who’s lying now?

Here’s a hint: The President and his Administration are trying the same sleight of hand trick with regard to Cap-and-Trade … oops, Cap-and-Tax.