It’s very clear now that the immediate consequence of the Supreme Court’s health care ruling will be another Pavlovian “tax!” chant from the GOP.
We’ve run through how this is only true in a narrow technical sense. A perfectly executed mandate — like an ideal carbon or cigarette tax — would raise $0. The goal is to change behavior not to generate revenue. This is not, in spirit, the sort of “tax increase” Republicans want you to believe it is, and to the extent they’re right, well then Mitt Romney raised the exact same tax in Massachusetts. Read More
CNN is launching an internal probe of botched court ruling report.
A good perspective-inducing look at the presidential horse race polls over the course of 2012 to date. Read More
“[W]e established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. Using tax penalties, as we did … encourages ‘free riders’ to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others.”
Best right-wing responses to Roberts decision so far? Here’s our list. What did we miss?
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) on Republicans: “The only health care mandate they can embrace are transvaginal probes for women.”
GOP governors split on whether to implement the Health Care Reform law.
Jack Shafer: Murdoch “makes Richard III look like a nice guy.”
I’ll just say that if he’s editing your article, Jack sometimes made Rupert Murdoch seem like a nice guy. But that doesn’t mean I don’t still love him!
In campaign conference call, one-time Rick Perry backer turned Romney surrogate slips and refers to “Obamneycare.”