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(116,464 posts) Fri Jun 29, 2012, 12:08 PM Jun 2012

Flashback: Romney admitted his mandate was a tax

Flashback: Romney admitted his mandate was a tax

By Greg Sargent

ABC News’s Michael Falcone unearths video of Mitt Romney admitting, in a 2008 presidential debate, that the individual mandate he passed as Governor of Massachusetts was a tax:

CHARLIE GIBSON: Governor, (inaudible) you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts (inaudible).

ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else...

The central argument that Republicans have been making in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling — which upheld the indivual mandate as a tax — is that it proves Obama foisted a massive tax hike on the nation. Yet Romney admitted that his own mandate was a tax, too.

Now, Romney can plausibly point out that his mandate was state-based, while Obama’s was federal. But as a policy tool, either the mandate is a tax, or it isn’t.

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UPDATE: Mitt Romney, in a 2009 USA Today Op ed:

Using tax penalties, as we did, or tax credits, as others have proposed, encourages “free riders” to take responsibility for themselves rather than pass their medical costs on to others

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/flashback-romney-admitted-his-mandate-was-a-tax/2012/06/29/gJQAeqMVBW_blog.html

Prediction: This op-ed will haunt Mitt in the same way that "Let Detroit go Bankrupt" does.