Zero Tolerance… Which One of Them Said It Was Free?
I realize this news item is a few weeks old but the relentless efforts of the Democrats to push Health Care Reform regardless of it’s popularity and it’s bankrupting certainty continues. I am sure they are hoping we will all get tired and weary of the fight against this massive government intrusion in our lives and just give up or go away. Not yet, so to follow up on Rob’s post yesterday ...Time To Melt The Phones: Senate Finance Committee To Vote On Obamacare Today it’s not over and I couldn’t get over how little coverage this preposterous IRS penalty known as the “Individual Mandate” had received in all of the media back in September.
Jail-Time Mandate from Democrats: Prison, $25,000 Fines for Not Having Health Insurance
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Flout_the_mandate_penalty_Face_the_IRS.html?showall
Americans who fail to pay the penalty for not buying insurance would face legal action from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The remarks Thursday from the committee’s chief of staff, Thomas Barthold, seems to further weaken President Barack Obama’s contention last week that the individual mandate penalty, which could go as high as $1,900, is not a tax increase.
Under questioning from Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Barthold said the IRS would “take you to court and undertake normal collection proceedings.”
Ensign pursued the line of questioning because he said a lot of Americans don’t believe the Constitution allows the government to mandate the purchase of insurance.
“We could be subjecting those very people who conscientiously, because they believe in the U.S. Constitution, we could be subjecting them to fines or the interpretation of a judge, all the way up to imprisonment,” Ensign said. “That seems to me to be a problem.”
Ensign’s argument, however, wasn’t persuasive to the committee — which rejected an amendment from Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) to eliminate the individual mandate.
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) was the only Republican to vote with Democrats to preserve the mandate.
And in case you think this smells like fishy dis-information and needs to be reported to the nearest ACORN office, there was confirmation…
Here’s the text of a note from Tom Barthold, chief of staff to the Joint Committee on Taxation, to US Senator John Ensign (R-NV) [Click here for PDF]:
http://a.abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Barthold_letter.pdfDear Senator Ensign,
Sec 7203 of the Code provides that if there is a willful failure to file, pay. maintain appropriate records and the like that the taxpayer may be charged with a misdemeanor with a penalty of up to $25,000 and not more than one year in jail.
Sincerely,
Thomas A. Barthold
The “Code” in question is the Internal Revenue Code, and Barthold’s note was a followup to Ensign’s public interrogation of him on the issue of whether or not the IRS would be responsible for enforcing the “individual mandate” in President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” plan.
Apparently the answer is “yes.”
I sense a growth industry in “House Arrest” ankle bracelets and other related paraphernalia. If you think people are pissed off now, how will the “Left” spin the good news about all the Debtors’ prisons?
ObamaCare ...You’re Going to Love It or Else…
