Given Obama’s years’ long shell game about whether or not Obamacare was a tax, isn’t it lovely to see the Tax Bill spell the end of Obamacare?
On September 20, 2009, Barack Obama had an interview with George Stephanopoulos during the run-up to the vote on the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”). Stephanopoulos, showing a surprising amount of journalistic integrity, asked Obama to explain how it was possible that the individual mandate was not a tax.
Reading Obama’s subsequent intellectual contortions is embarrassing in the same way that it’s embarrassing to watch someone’s pants fall down in public. You’re seeing something you shouldn’t see — in Obama’s case, that something being the fact that we elected a con man as president. Obama embarked on a convoluted, incoherent explanation about money flowing to the taxpayer in a way that could never be mistaken for a tax. Since we know he’s not an idiot, he was obviously running a con.
Stephanopoulos tried to stem the tide of words with logic, but Obama was relentless. Eventually, Stephanopoulos fell back on the dictionary (perhaps mindful of the fact that Obama, in 2008, snapped, “Don’t tell me that words don’t matter”), to point out that, no matter which way Obama spun things, he was describing a tax. Obama responded as only he could, with snark and lies:
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.”
OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what …
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, no, but …
OBAMA: … what you’re saying is …
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wanted to check for myself. But your critics say it is a tax increase.
OBAMA: My critics say everything is a tax increase. My critics say that I’m taking over every sector of the economy. You know that. Look, we can have a legitimate debate about whether or not we’re going to have an individual mandate or not, but …
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you reject that it’s a tax increase?
OBAMA: I absolutely reject that notion.
The lovely thing about being a narcissist, whether as an individual or a political party, is that the truth is always defined by the needs of the moment. So it was that, four years later, Team Obama switched sides on the argument when it came time to defending Obamacare before the Supreme Court. The Court was amused at the time, although the last laugh was on Americans: [Read more…]