In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act as constitutional under the taxing powers of Congress, the Obama administration can’t seem to call it a tax. Instead, they’re trying to peddle the “tax” as a penalty. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew did his run through the Sunday morning talk shows with this entertaining spin. Even former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos was unconvinced: “As you know, President Obama denied all along that this was a tax. Is he now prepared to defend it?”
Mr. Lew stuck to the "not a tax" spin: “I think we have to take a step back. What is in the law is a penalty. It starts by saying all Americans have a right to health insurance. For Americans who buy health insurance or who can't afford it and get it through a government program, there is no penalty.”
However, Stephanopolous pressed on with “you keep wanting to use the word penalty...they [The Supreme Court] found it constitutional because it is a tax, not a penalty. Here is the Chief Justice. Right here, he said, "The shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax, not a penalty." Lew denied it again and indirectly called the American people stupid, stating:
LEW: The Supreme Court looked at what the structure of the law was, and they saw that 1 percent of the people would be paying this charge if they chose not to avail themselves of health insurance. But more middle-class people are going to get a tax cut in this law. There's a tax cut of $4,000 for people who need help paying for health insurance.
You know, if you look at the past, since President Obama's been in office, middle-class families have gotten a $3,600 tax cut. In this law, there's a $4,000 tax cut for people who need help paying for health insurance. For that 1 percent who have chosen not to buy health insurance and just to pass the burden onto others, there's this penalty.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you do concede -- and you keep wanting to use the word penalty -- you do concede that the law survived only because Justice Roberts found this to be a tax?
LEW: You know, I think, if you look at the decision, which is a very complicated one, you know, there are arguments that support different theories. There was...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But the argument of Chief Justice Roberts is that it's a tax.
LEW: He -- he went through the different powers that Congress has and he found that there is a power, whatever you call it, to assess a penalty like this.STEPHANOPOULOS: He called it a tax. So you're conceding that?
LEW: I'm saying that it was set up as a penalty for people who choose not to buy insurance, even though they can afford it, and for that 1 percent, we call it fair.
Lew’s assertion of the opinion being complicated, even though the part we’re discussing is explicitly clear in the written opinion, highlights the progressive left’s inherent condescension. I guess the vast majority of Americans, who aren’t members of educational elite with learned diction, can’t possibly understand the difference between a tax and a penalty. How progressive of them? Mr. Lew’s shameless spinning and distortion of the facts even has liberals in the media saying he’s wrong.
