That’s the clear implication of the legal argument that Obama’s Department of Justice is using to fend off a lawsuit brought by 20 state AGs who say the individual mandate is unconstitutional:
In order to protect the new national health care law from legal challenges, the Obama administration has been forced to argue that the individual mandate represents a tax—-even though Obama himself argued the exact opposite while campaigning to pass the legislation.
To refresh your memory, the President was challenged by George Stephanopoulos on this question last year, and Obama insisted that the mandate “is absolutely not a tax increase.â€? Here’s the video:
But that’s not what DOJ says. The legal brief (warning: big PDF file) it filed in Florida on Monday claims that the mandate and its penalty are legitimate under the taxing authority of Congress:
The Justice Department is now calling it a tax to try and convince the court not to rule on whether or not Congress exceeded their authority under the Commerce Clause by legislating that all citizens must purchase private health insurance or face a penalty.
There is, of course, no connection made between the mandate and the taxing power of Congress in the final Obamacare bill. It was justified at time of passage by the Constitution’s commerce clause.
But that doesn’t matter in the Orwellian world of the Obama regime. The law and the President’s own words mean nothing in the headlong rush to jam this abomination down our throats.
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