Democrats are in full retreat due to the Supreme Court ruling that the penalties involved in the Affordable Care Act are in fact a tax. The 5-4 majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts dismissed the legitimacy of Congress using the Commerce Clause to authorize ′Obama-Care′ and instead declared that the penalties for not buying health insurance are a tax. Given that the law was written delegating collection of the penalty to the IRS, one can easily see why Justice Roberts saw ACA as being Constitutional under the authority of Congress to levy taxes. So from the White House, with Jay Carney, to Congress, such as Nancy Pelosi, Democrats are in a state of denial that Barack Obama is about to levy the single largest tax increase upon the middle class in American history.

obama care tax

The one basic truth being lost in all of this is that all spending is a tax. Obama has already broken all records for spending more than any other president. Now the cost of that spending will slam into the wallets of every American. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the cost of Obama-Care will be more than $1.7 Trillion dollars over the next ten years, revised from the earlier estimate of $960 Billion dollars. The Kaiser Family Foundation has calculated that the cost of health insurance premiums for the average American household will increase $2,200 per year. Obama and the Democrats deceived the nation saying that such costs would decline $2,500 a year.

The impact of economic growth is another fly in the buttermilk. The Supreme Court decision now makes it obvious to businesses that hiring more employees this year could prove to be just too expensive. The uncertainty of what may follow after the November elections adds to the position of waiting and holding back on expansion. So we can expect the rest of this year to continue to be a flat one for GDP growth, which means the tax base will remain stagnant as well.

Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats can deny all they want that the penalties of the Affordable Care Act are not a tax, but the effect is still the same. Obama-Care will cause the single largest added expense to middle class families nationwide. Jay Carney, Nancy Pelosi and the rest can make all of the excuses they want, but the bottom line is that American households earning $40,000 to $80,000 per year are going to be hit hard in their wallets thanks to Obama-Care.