Cotton ‘Reminds’ Democrats the Obamacare Individual Mandate Is a Tax

Via Billy

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) on Wednesday responded to Democrats who are criticizing the Senate Republican tax reform bill for repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate, reminding them how the Obama administration argued before the Supreme Court that the requirement is a tax.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Cotton addressed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D., N.Y.) comments earlier in the day that Republicans are “injecting health care into the tax bill” by including a repeal of the individual mandate, which forces most Americans who do not have health care to pay a fine.

“I would remind him, and all of the other Democrats who have been denouncing this decision on the Senate Finance Committee, that the individual mandate is a tax, according, not to me, not to Republicans, but to the Obama administration,” Cotton said. “That is what they argued in 2012 to the Supreme Court even though, he contended, throughout the debate on Obamacare in 2009 and 2010 that it wasn’t a tax.”