September 21, 2009
I’m sure Obama just “misspoke.”
I’m sure Obama just “misspoke”:
In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.
But he could look it up — in the bill.
Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”
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.”
It’s kind of funny that Obama thinks he can change the publics’ mind on this one. The problem is not that he hasn’t explained it correctly or that we don’t get it. The problem is the American public does get it and we don’t want it. It’s not about the message, it’s about the bill.
We know it has to be paid for some how and we know that this will lead to more taxes. The reason it doesn’t matter how many speeches Obama gives, or how many times he tries to explain it to us, is because we don’t trust him. He has no credibility. He can tell us whatever he wants, but it won’t change anyone’s mind if we don’t believe what he says. And, this just feeds the idea we shouldn’t believe him because it’s hard to believe he didn’t know about this excise tax.
No matter how you look at it, this doesn’t play well for him. Either he knew about the excise tax and lied to the American people, or he’s pushing and endorsing a bill he hasn’t read and doesn’t understand. Neither of those scenarios sounds good.
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