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.

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.”

The Tax that Isn’t a Tax Because President Obama Isn’t a Liar, and Even if He Were, He Wouldn’t Lie About Something Like Taxes on the Middle Class, Except to Stop Global Warming, Which May or May Not Be Real, Depending On Who Is Lying About that

Declan McCullagh reports at cbsnews.com:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

“A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says that the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year.  At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.”

The documents were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

This one is courtesy of Matthias Shapiro. Some of his videos have netted more than 1 million views.

The 9-12 taxpayer rally was simply an amazing experience.  I arrived just before noon, having to endure a packed Metro ride full of taxpayers headed to the event.

It took about 30 minutes to walk from 12th and Pennsylvania to the Capitol.  Contrary to what some left-of-center pundits might say, the rally was not packed with crazies preaching secession.

The rally was full with ordinary taxpayers who drove thousands of miles for the rally.  I met a group from Georgia who drove through the night to attend the rally.  They planned to drive through the night again because they couldn’t afford to spend two nights in a hotel.  They weren’t paid off by anyone to come and this was actually the first protest they had ever attended.

This was not an AstroTurf rally.  The 9-12 rally was a legitimate expression of taxpayer frustration over reckless taxing and spending.  Estimates vary from 60,000 to 100,000, but whatever the number, the experience was amazing and the politicians in this city ought to listen.  As our friend Andrew Moylan noted, “Hell hath no fury like a taxpayer ignored.”

Here is some footage:

Here’s a great video from our friends at Americans for Tax Reform:

There has been a lot of talk in the media (here, here and here) about how Herbert Hoover was a great miser and should have spent his way out of the economic downturn like Obama is attempting to do.  The myth might be as old as Hoover’s administration: Hoover was a free-market Republican who let Americans suffer instead of attempting government intervention.

False.  It’s hard to believe that a quick search through our own budget data proves that Hoover was more of Keynesian, someone who spent plenty and raised taxes in his vain attempt to “prime” the U.S. economy toward a resurgence.

Reviewing budget numbers from the White House’s own budget, we see that Hoover drastically increased the size and scope of government.  When Hoover arrived in the White House in 1929, he inherited a surplus of $734 million (back when that was real money).  After he left in 1933, the surplus turned into a $2.6 billion deficit.

Of course, some of this decline was due to lower revenues as a result of the depression, but looking at the outlays during his tenure and you’ll see a massive increase in the size of the federal budget, partly with the help of a Republican Congress as well.  From 1929 to 1933, Hoover increased federal outlays from $3.1 billion to approximately $4.6 billion, a 48% increase. From 1931 to 1932, outlays surged 30%.  Yes, Hoover was a real miser, a free-market fiend who hated spending the money of hard-working taxpayers.

To put Hoover’s 48% increase in perspective, progressives often assailed President Bush as a free-market disciple who refused to spend money on levies, the poor, or the uninsured.  During Bush’s tenure, estimated federal outlays surged 57%, even more than Hoover and LBJ’s Great Society (approximately 50%).

So, the next time you hear someone say that a runaway free-market caused the Great Depression and our current crisis, just remind them that Bush made LBJ look like Uncle Scrooge and Hoover drove federal expenditures faster than President Clinton.  Old rumors die slowly but this is one that needs to end now before we continue to perpetuate even more big-spending government boondoggles.