Hotair ^ | 07/03/2012 | ERIKA JOHNSEN
Just remember, guys: The Internal Revenue Service might be the best-equipped entity to administer the "penalty," and the "penalty" might be assessed on your tax return, but the requirement to pay a "penalty" if you don't buy health insurance is most definitively not a tax.
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Speaking on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," Wasserman Schultz said Monday, that the law should be enforced by the federal government’s taxing arm because “it’s simply a matter of ease in administration.”Okay, whatever, Democrats — call it what you want. It looks like a tax, it smells like a tax, but fine, it’s just the feds penalizing you for exercising your personal freedom to not buy health insurance. But the fact remains that this “penalty” is going to funnel more of Americans’ money out of the productive private economy and into the government, and it’s going to be a huge imposition to the middle class.
“The way we usually think of taxation, Wolf, is that taxation as the IRS administers is collected on broad swaths and large categories of individuals,” Wasserman Schultz said. “This is a penalty that will be assessed on the tax return if you choose to roll the dice and make us all pay for your being irresponsible and increase all of our health care costs.
“We’re not going to tolerate that any more in America. You have to be responsible and you have to pay a penalty if you choose not to be,” she continued.
In related news, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has led the charge of Republican states — so far including Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin — in declining to start battening down the hatches for the optional portions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. (Heh. “Affordable.” Sorry, I still can’t say that with a straight face.) While I applauded Gov. Scott’s leadership on refusing to accept that ObamaCare is going to become a historical fact and pledging to continue to work toward its repeal, Rep. Wasserman Schultz didn’t happen to see it that way.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), described her state governor as “a spoiled brat” for trying to fight Obamacare even though the Supreme Court ruled the law constitutional.Yes, I do think that perhaps someone is showing just a touch of petulance here — but it isn’t Gov. Scott.
“I think he’s acting like a spoiled brat,” Wasserman Schultz said of Gov. Rick Scott, R-Fla., per WOKV. “He insisted that the law was unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has ruled. The matter should be settled.”
