The Supreme Court of the United States has issued their ruling on the federal health care law known as ObamaCare. In an absolute shocker, they tell us that the individual mandate is Constitutional, because it is a tax. But, didn’t President Obama swear up and down that it was not, in fact, a tax?
It is official. By 2014, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have to pay a fine, to the Internal Revenue Service. At first, it will be 1% of your income, or $95, whichever is greater. In 2015, 2% of your income, or $325. Over 1/3 of the taxes in the law are aimed at families making under $250,000 per year. You will be punished by the federal government if you choose not to spend money on insurance coverage you don’t need, and the Supreme Court decided that this was not unconstitutional, ruling this law Constitutional on the grounds that Congress has the power to levy taxes and this is definitely a tax.
The mandate on the states is also horrendous. Under the law, by 2014, states will be required to provide Medicaid coverage for every adult who earns up to 133% of the poverty level income. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission estimates that could bring Medicaid enrollment in Texas up to as much as 6.2 million by 2020 – compared to 3.5 million today. Medicaid spending is already outpacing growth and beginning to shut out all other state spending – from 2001 to 2011, Medicaid spending in Texas went from 14% of the budget to 20.2%, and by 2023 may be as much as 37.2% of the budget.
Every individual is going to be affected by this. We are looking at an unprecedented overreach of power. But we knew all of that, and we were counting on the Supreme Court to see that, too. In a way, though they did not overturn it, the Supreme Court recognized what President Obama emphatically and repeatedly denied – ObamaCare is a tax increase. It will be very interesting to hear reaction from the White House and elsewhere defending the law on those grounds, because they will have to finally admit, this is the worst tax-and-spend administration in American history. And if they don’t own that, well, we can make sure it follows them throughout the rest of their tenure in Washington.
If Congress has the power to tax, they also have the power to overturn a tax, and all our efforts in this election year need to be on ousting the tax-and-spend Congressional members who felt and still feel that this was the right thing to do. Sending Barack Obama home has never been so absolutely crucial as it is in the wake of this decision – we have the power of the vote, something we don’t have with the Court, and we can undo some of the damage in November.
