Headed for a great big extra hidden VAT tax, like EU has!

[Devil's Advocate]

How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving! Here's
Obama's promise of no new taxes on people making less than $250k!

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/vat_tax_healthcare_reform/2009/11/28/
291701.html

Value Added Tax Hidden in Health Reform

Saturday, November 28, 2009 2:44 PM

By: Theodore Kettle Article Font Size

With spending at nearly 25 percent of GDP and headed for more than 40
percent of national output, according to the liberal Progressive Policy
Institute, how will the Democrats pay for it all?

The evidence points toward the way big-government, slow-growth Europe
does it: the value added tax.

Working as a sales tax that you don�t get to see on your receipt, the
VAT has proven to be a brutally efficient money machine in other
countries. Maybe that�s why Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi last
month told Charlie Rose that a VAT was �on the table� as a solution to
America's fiscal liabilities.

Special: Get Sarah Palin�s New Book � Incredible FREE Offer � Click Here
Now.

But it�s not just �on the table.� It�s in the Senate�s health reform
bill soon to be voted on.

The Senate bill�s �fee� on medical devices operates much like a VAT, and
could end up being the model for future adoption of an unprecedented VAT
on all goods and services in the United States.

Deep into the 2,074-page bill, on page 2,020, is �SEC. 9009,� the
�Imposition of Annual Fee on Medical Device Manufacturers and
Importers.� It orders that �Each covered entity engaged in the business
of manufacturing or importing medical devices shall pay to the
[Treasury] Secretary not later than the annual payment date of each
calendar year beginning after 2009 a fee in an amount determined under
subsection (b).�

The amount of tax would be based on �gross receipts from medical device
sales.� Treasury bureaucrats would have the formidable power of
�identification of medical devices� and the new tax would be
retroactive, applying to �any medical device sales after December 31,
2008.�

Bruce Bartlett, deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury under former
President George H.W. Bush, has called a VAT perhaps �the least bad way
of financing needed tax reforms and the massive growth of federal health
care spending that neither the [George W. Bush] White House nor Congress
shows any interest in restraining.�

But in pushing for his tax reform program in 1985, President Ronald
Reagan warned that �a value-added tax actually gives a government a
chance to blindfold the people and grow in stature and size.�

For President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, a VAT may be
just the blindfold needed for the Europeanization of the U.S. economy �
massive government, high unemployment and a lower quality of life: a
very new lifestyle for Americans.