{"id":663,"date":"2009-09-20T16:49:05","date_gmt":"2009-09-20T20:49:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=663"},"modified":"2009-09-20T17:18:27","modified_gmt":"2009-09-20T21:18:27","slug":"obama-i-wont-tax-americans-earning-under-250000-ill-merely-penalize-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/663\/obama-i-wont-tax-americans-earning-under-250000-ill-merely-penalize-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama: I Won&#8217;t &#8220;Tax&#8221; Americans Earning Under $250,000, I&#8217;ll Merely &#8220;Penalize&#8221; Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Barack Obama isn&#8217;t going to &#8220;tax&#8221; Americans earning under $250,000 to help subsidize his healthcare overhaul &#8211; he&#8217;s merely going to &#8220;penalize&#8221; them, which is apparently something altogether different and palatable.<\/p>\n<p>During this morning&#8217;s Obamapalooza tour of the Sunday talk shows (intentionally ostracizing <em>Fox News Sunday<\/em>, in a most <a href=\"http:\/\/a.abcnews.com\/m\/screen?id=8621065&amp;pid=4380645\" target=\"_blank\">un-Presidential fit of spite<\/a>), a prevaricating Obama bizarrely insisted that his healthcare reform&#8217;s penalty provisions for those without insurance somehow do not amount to a &#8220;tax&#8221; on Americans earning under $250,000, but rather a justifiable &#8220;penalty.&#8221;\u00a0 Throughout a large portion of his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abcnews.go.com\/ThisWeek\/Politics\/transcript-president-barack-obama\/story?id=8618937\" target=\"_blank\">interview with ABC&#8217;s George Stephanopoulos<\/a>, the two battled over this topic, with a visibly frustrated Obama even reproaching Stephanopoulos for reading Merriam&#8217;s definition of &#8220;tax&#8221; &#8211; &#8220;a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead of honestly explaining why his plan doesn&#8217;t meet this simple definition, Obama descended into pettiness and replied, &#8220;George, the fact that you looked up Merriam&#8217;s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you&#8217;re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn&#8217;t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The reason that Obama resorted to this contortion of logic is that he solemnly and repeatedly promised throughout his campaign that he wouldn&#8217;t raise taxes on Americans earning under $250,000 by a single dime.\u00a0 Knowing that he cannot afford his own version of President George H. W. Bush&#8217;s &#8220;read my\u00a0 lips &#8211; no new taxes&#8221; broken pledge, Obama will apparently stop at nothing in his Orwellian campaign of distortion.<\/p>\n<p>Is he lying?\u00a0 Or is he honestly confused?\u00a0 Who knows anymore.\u00a0 But uninsured Americans earning under $250,000 can rest assured that the money they&#8217;ll be forced to pay under ObamaCare isn&#8217;t a &#8220;tax,&#8221; it&#8217;s just a &#8220;penalty.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barack Obama isn&#8217;t going to &#8220;tax&#8221; Americans earning under $250,000 to help subsidize his healthcare overhaul &#8211; he&#8217;s merely going to &#8220;penalize&#8221; them, which is apparently something altogether different and palatable. During this morning&#8217;s Obamapalooza tour of the Sunday talk shows (intentionally ostracizing Fox News Sunday, in a most un-Presidential fit of spite), a prevaricating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,24,35,71],"class_list":["post-663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-health-care","tag-obama","tag-obamacare","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":678,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}