Depends on your definition of what a “tax” is

Arguing With Dictionaries Won’t Win Over Obamacare Critics

On Sunday President Obama set a record by visiting five talk shows to push his proposed health care overhaul. After an initial bump in support for his plan following his address to Congress in early September fifty-six percent of voters nationwide now oppose the rationed health care plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats. An NBC poll shows that 54 percent of Americans are more worried about government control of health care than they are worried about reform not going far enough. And 66 percent of doctors reject the democratic bill to overhaul the health care system. These troubling numbers prompted the president to take his message of universal health care to the top Sunday morning talk shows with the exception of FOX News Sunday which he decided to boycott. He will follow this with an appearance on Jay Leno on Monday night. The president is throwing his full political weight behind an unpopular plan that will radically change the American health care system. Barack Obama decided this past week that it’s not the plan that he’s been pushing for months that’s at fault. It’s the American public who are at fault for not understanding the plan.

And so Barack Obama made the circuit on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the president brought nothing new to the table and his appearances only brought more attention to his unrealistic interpretation of the proposal. On “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos Obama insisted that his plan requiring people to get health insurance and fining them if they don’t would not amount to a backhanded tax increase. When Stephanopoulos argued that this was a tax increase and used Merriam Webster’s Dictionary to back up his point the president actually challenged the definition of “tax.”

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it’s still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That’s not true, George. The… ?for us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore than the fact that… right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance. Nobody considers that a tax increase. People say to themselves, that is a fair way to make sure that if you hit my car, that I’m not covering all the costs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy…

OBAMA: No, but… but, George, you… you can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase. Any…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I… I don’t think I’m making it up. Merriam Webster’s Dictionary: Tax…”a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.”

Advertisement