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Broken healthcare, broken promises
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Jim Babka, president of the libertarian educational organization Downsize DC called out Democrats in general and President Obama in particular about all of the broken campaign promises contained in the recently passed healthcare bill..jpg)
"It seems to me that Obama and many other Democrats lied to win election (just like the Republicans did before them)," Babka wrote in the group's November 12 newsletter, Downsizer Dispatch.
During the presidential campaign, Babka charged, Candidate Barrack Obama promised there would be no mandates requiring Americans to buy health insurance (he scoffed at Hillary’s proposal to do just that) and as president he famously made a "firm pledge" that "No family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase," (emphasis added) as quoted in a video recorded in .jpg)
Dover NH on August 3, 2009.
But according to Babka, page 29 of the Baucus bill pending in the Senate says, "The consequence for not maintaining (health) insurance would be an excise tax." The excise tax would apply to everyone, including those who earn less than $250,000 a year.
One mandate and one tax increase in the same sentence equals two broken promises.
The president's denial to the contrary ("I absolutely reject that notion"), the act of government forcing citizens to fork over money .jpg)
against their will for any purpose, including health insurance, is simply a tax by another name.
And the opposite is also true; a government that punishes people with a tax penalty for not forking over their money is also a tax.
Remember too that Americans were promised a middleclass tax cut. But historically, tax cuts in one area are wiped out by new taxes in other areas, such as all those contained in the healthcare bill, belying the President's promise of no tax increase in "any form.".jpg)
It's therefore difficult to see how all the new mandates, excise taxes, tax penalties, non-compliance taxes, compliance costs, fulfillment of time-consuming IRS reporting regulations, and a $37 billion Medicaid expansion that will require the states to increase their state taxes could result in a net middleclass tax cut.
Also, new "taxes on the rich," and "business taxes" which include large and small businesses alike, inevitably result in those taxes being passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices that strain the pocketbooks of everyone, middleclass included. Inflation, being a general and progressive increase in prices, is another tax on .jpg)
everyone but hits the middle and lower classes the hardest.
Babka began his fiery rhetoric by urging everyone to use the organization's "Educate the Powerful" System to flood Congress with demands to "continue to fight the coercive, statist, healthcare bill."
He concludes his own letter to congress this way:
"First the Republicans promised us fiscal restraint and no nation building. We gave them power and they broke their promises. Then the Democrats promised us middle class tax cuts, no middle class tax increases, and no expensive health insurance mandates. We gave them power and they too broke their promises. PLEASE STOP LYING TO US!"
There will almost certainly be Constitutional legal challenges once the bill becomes law. However,.jpg){kind=small}
When CNSNews.com asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi where the Constitution grants Congress the authority to mandate healthcare insurance her response was, "Are you serious? Are you serious?"
(Video from YouTube. Logo courtesy of DownsizeDC.org )
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