When A Tax is Not A Tax: President Obama Joins Orwellian World of Colorado Democrats

Posted by Linda Gorman in Budget and Tax, Colorado, Health Care on Sep 21st, 2009 | no responses

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The Baucus bill calls the fine for not complying with its individual mandate to buy health insurance an "excise tax."

President Obama must have gone to school with Colorado Democrats.

This weekend, President Obama told George Staphanopoulos that the Baucus excise tax is really not a tax because to say you "have to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase." [link]

This year the Colorado legislature, which is controlled by Democrats, decided that a measure which makes hospitals send a fixed percentage of billed patient charges to state government was not a tax either, and Colorado's Democrat governor, Bill Ritter, signed the bill.

The Colorado Constitution forbids tax increases without a vote of the population. The state needed money, a tax increase would have gone down in flames, so elected officials simply renamed a tax a "fee."

In Colorado, it appears that paying the state extra when you need hospital care absolutely isn't a tax increase either.

As Colorado Democrats and President Obama have discovered, life is much easier for elected officials who don't worry about the plain meaning of words or, apparently, the Constitutions and statutes that contain them.

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