-- Republicans are inadvertently inviting a new comparison
between the Affordable Care Act and Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts
health care reforms. This time it's about taxes.
Citing Thursday's landmark Supreme Court ruling upholding
the ACA on taxing power grounds, Republicans are attacking
Democrats for having surreptitiously raised taxes.
But if that's true of Democrats, it's also true of Romney.
"We established incentives for those who were uninsured
to buy insurance," Romney wrote in a 2009 USA Today op-ed.
"Using tax penalties, as we did … encourages free riders' to
take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their
medical costs on to others."
Romney has a long public record of supporting his individual mandate
— a record he'd love to bury. But this is a rare example of
him boasting that the mandate amounts to the same tax he and
other Republicans are now attacking Obama for having adopted in
the ACA.
Linked here:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/romney-my-individual-mandate-was-also-a-tax-increase.php?ref=fpblg