Our boastful and arrogant president has gotten himself in a real pickle. In 2008, when President Obama was elected, he ran on the premise of no new
taxes on the middle-class and poor along with the promise of health-care reform. He managed to get his health-care reform done, but recently it has only been upheld under the ability of the government to tax. In other words,
the "penalty" is now legally a "tax." It is kind of like having a jug of milk
and a bottle of juice, and calling both milk. A penalty is not a tax, as
juice is not milk. (Whether the structure of this “tax” even actually conforms with the economic definition of “tax” is another question.)
