The White House is standing by its position that individual mandate in President Obama’s healthcare law is a penalty despite the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold it as a tax.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters traveling with Obama on Friday that the mandate enforces a penalty, not a tax, because people have a choice whether to obtain health insurance.
“You can call it what you will, but if affects 1 percent” of the population, Carney said, according to a White House pool report.
NO AMOUNT OF LYING CAN CHANGE OBAMATAX FOR WHAT IT IS MR PRESIDENT – A BIG FAT TAX ON THE MIDDLE CLASS
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said in the court’s majority opinion Thursday that the healthcare law “imposes a tax citizens may lawfully choose to pay in lieu of buying health insurance.” In doing so, he embraced the government’s fallback legal argument, which was that the mandate is constitutional under Congress’s taxing powers.