Tax, schmax: Does it matter what Romney calls the health-care mandate?
Under President Obama鈥檚 health-care reforms, Americans will have to pay the federal government a fee if they don鈥檛 have health insurance. Does it matter if that fee is called a 鈥減enalty鈥� or a 鈥渢ax鈥�?
That question arises because Mitt Romney on Wednesday said that he agreed with the Supreme Court on this question, and that the fee in question is a 鈥渢ax." This amounted to a change of position, because earlier in the week top Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom said the campaign viewed this payment as a penalty, fee, or fine, but not a tax.
鈥淭he majority of the court said it鈥檚 a tax and therefore it is a tax,鈥� Mr. Romney told CBS News in an interview. 鈥淭hey have spoken. There鈥檚 no way around that.鈥�
Why worry about this nomenclature? Because conservatives were furious that Romney was, in their view, throwing away a political gift handed to Republicans by high court justices.
Yes, a 5-to-4 majority found Obama鈥檚 health mandate constitutional. But they did so by framing the mandate as a tax, which is a charged word. Who likes taxes? Nobody. What鈥檚 the phrase Republicans have put in front of 鈥淒emocrat鈥� for years? 鈥淭ax-and-spend."
鈥淐learly, if it鈥檚 a tax, you can argue, No. 1, against Obama [that] he was disingenuous for a year and a half, pretending a tax wasn鈥檛 a tax. Second, you can say that having promised he wouldn鈥檛 raise taxes on middle-income people, this thing hits overwhelmingly people in the middle income bracket. Lastly, you can say this is a tax like many others in Obamacare,鈥� said conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer on Bret Baier鈥檚 Fox News show Wednesday.
However, in quickly contradicting his aide鈥檚 description of the fee, Romney risks being called a flip-flopper by Democrats. Perhaps more dangerously, he leaves himself open to criticism that he himself raised taxes while governor of Massachusetts, because he instituted a similar mandate with its own penalty/fine/tax structure.
In his CBS interview Wednesday Romney argued this point, saying that the Supreme Court drew a distinction between the taxing power of the federal government and police powers of states. But that鈥檚 the aspect of this debate on which the Obama administration pounced Thursday.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a penalty,鈥� White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One en route to Ohio.
Mr. Carney added that the mandate was modeled after Romney鈥檚 health plan in Massachusetts, according to a pool report.
Does this argument really matter? Will any swing voter switch sides because they hear something called a 鈥渢ax鈥�, as opposed to a 鈥減enalty鈥�?
Ezra Klein, editor of the Washington Post鈥檚 Wonkblog, 鈥� that no one will embrace the idea of paying a penalty for going without health insurance yet recoil in horror from the prospect of paying a tax for the same thing.
Mr. Klein makes the point that the individual mandate is already unpopular, whatever words are used to describe it, according to polls. He notes that it is the least-liked aspect of Obama鈥檚 health-care reforms. Opinion on this, and on other aspects of what Republicans call Obamacare, is already polarized.
鈥淭he idea that, this late in the game, even one vote will be decided by whether Republicans call this already-disliked policy 鈥榓 tax鈥� rather than 鈥榓 penalty鈥� or 鈥榞overnment coercion鈥� or 鈥榡ackbooted thugs making you buy health care鈥� strains credulity,鈥� writes Klein.
