Republicans: Ruling focuses election on Obama’s health care tax

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times:

The Supreme Court handed President Obama a major political victory on his signature health-care issue Thursday, but the justices also provided Republicans with a sharper campaign issue by defining the law’s individual mandate as a tax.

The ruling allows Mr. Obama to engage in a four-month-long victory lap as he campaigns for reelection. And it validates the president’s decision to devote so much time and energy to passing the law in 2009 while the economy was in free fall, a divisive vote that contributed to Democrats losing the House in 2010.

Democrats didn’t try to hide their “I-told-you-so” reaction to the decision, although Mr. Obama and some others did try to downplay the political benefits.

“I know there will be a lot of discussion today about the politics of all this — about who won and who lost,” Mr. Obama said, adding that such talk “completely misses the point” of the law’s benefits.

Rep. Steve Israel, New York Democrat and chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign committee, said the ruling “isn’t a political victory for Democrats, it’s a victory for America’s middle class and seniors, and now House Republicans need to drop their partisan obstruction and move on.”

But Republicans also saw political opportunity in the ruling.

“It will be a short-lived celebration in the White House,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “Obama now goes into the fall campaign defending a law that most Americans think will increase their health care costs, their premiums, their taxes, and the deficit. He also has to defend raising taxes on all Americans, which he pledged not to do.”

Sen. Mike Lee, Utah Republican and a member of the tea party caucus, said Mr. Obama’s victory will be “fleeting” and argued that most Americans didn’t like the law’s individual mandate in the first place.

“They’ll like it even less when they understand it’s a tax,” Mr. Lee said on Fox News.

The high court’s ruling leaves in place 21 tax increases in the health-care law costing more than $675 billion over the next 10 years, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. Of those, 12 tax hikes would affect families earning less than $250,000 per year, the panel said, including a “Cadillac tax” on high-cost insurance plans, a tax on insurance providers, and an excise tax on medical device manufacturers.

“This is a clear violation of the president’s pledge to avoid tax hikes on low- and middle-income taxpayers,” said a statement from the panel, which is chaired by Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican.

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The fight's not over...

[Casino67]

Vote to repeal has been scheduled for July 11 in the House.

 

The talking heads are all over the place on just what the decision means and John Roberts' clever or radical decision on the matter.

 

Closer reading of the decision in necessary and what it really means.