The hypocrisy of the Tea Party Republicans runs deep, but luckily … we’re Nobody’s Fool.
We see both Eric Cantor and Bobby Jindal turn a blind eye to Mitt Romney’s RomneyCare that wanted to provide insurance to 
undocumented immigrants as they try to tweet their frustrations on twitter against the Supreme Court Decision to uphold Obama’s health care.
You see, many people may not know this but Mitt Romney was for providing government health insurance to undocumented immigrants via RomneyCare before he changed his position on immigration (a thousand times or so) and before he decided to make an alliance with Kris Kobach, Pete Wilson and the likes of Russell Pearce.
Truth is … Romney changes as many times as the wind does. In fact, nobody knows Mitt Romney’s principled stances anymore because he has changed his views so many times. Nobody knows where Romney really stands, and all we have is his history to go by. So far we know he slashed jobs via his Bain Capital venture, he is for the 1%, and he was merely a one term Massachusetts governor who did nothing for the Irish immigrants (or any other immigrants for that matter).
Since Rep. Cantor and Gov. Jindal forgot about RomneyCare, perhaps they need “one of their own” to educate them to that regard when Daniel Horowitz spoke on the matter?
Well, the facts are in. Romneycare has failed to control costs, and has dramatically raised the price of health insurance on everyone. Nevertheless, Mitt Romney denies the facts and continues to view his signature legislation as a success. He has repeatedly asserted that 92% of Massachusetts residents are unaffected by Romneycare. Yet, he has consistently and vehemently declined to endorse a similar plan on a national level. What happened to his conviction that ” if Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation?”
Romney is trying to deny the facts and nobody knows where he stands. All I know is that Romney is a power hungry Wall Streeter that supports crony capitalism. Eric and Bobby pretending to look at Romney for who he is and what he has supported in his political history is a direct insult to Americans. Politicians can no longer think Americans are not aware. We are aware, and we know that Romney pretty much supported ObamaCare before he decided to flip flop on it to take a populist approach.
Mitt Romney is slamming Obamacare as a huge tax increase, but his Massachusetts mandate did the exact same thing
By Alex Seitz-Wald
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The problem here for Romney is that his health care law in Massachusetts did the exact same thing as the Roberts-tweaked version of Obamacare will do. The individual mandate Romney installed uses the same tax scheme to penalize free riders as the Affordable Care Act will, charging people who choose to not purchase health insurance a penalty through the tax code. And Romney himself has acknowledged as much — many times.
In 2008, when Romney was running for president for the first time, ABC News host Charlie Gibson asked him during a New Hampshire debate, “Governor … you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts?” Romney replied, “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.” It was the same debate in which he infamously declared, “I like mandates.”
In 2006, Romney explained in a Powerpoint presentation how the state would enforce his mandate. “We will withhold any of their tax refund” for people who don’t purchase insurance, he said. The former governor said the same thing in a 2009 interview with CNN: “There are a number of ways to encourage people to get insurance, and what we did, we said ‘you’re going to lose a tax exemption if you don’t have insurance.’”
In a way, Roberts forced the Obama administration to take Romney’s advice by swapping out the outright mandate with a tax scheme. In a 2009 op-ed in USA Today, Romney laid out some suggestions for President Obama to follow on health care. “First, we established incentives for those who were uninsured to buy insurance. 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,” Romney wrote. That’s exactly what Roberts upheld yesterday.
And the Obama campaign is quick to point out that while Romney and other Republicans are accusing the president of enacting a huge tax increase, the penalties under Romneycare are bigger than under Obamacare. According to a study from the Center for Health Law and Economics at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, forwarded to Salon by the Obama campaign, the differences are huge. An adult over the age of 27 who makes more than 300 percent of the poverty line (about $37,000 a year) and chooses not to purchase health insurance would pay at least $695 in penalties under Obamcare. Under Romneycare, that same person would pay at least $1,530 in penalties.
Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped design both Romneycare and Obamacare, said today on a conference call organized by the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund that Obama’s penalty will affect only a tiny portion of Americans. “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that about one percent of the population will end up paying this penalty. This not a broad new tax on the middle class. It is trivial. It is four, the CBO estimates it is $4 billion in revenues from this penalty. That is trivial relative to the almost $100 billion that you would get in [subsidies], once it’s phased in, in new tax credits to individuals to buy health insurance. So this is on net this an enormous tax cut for the middle class. This is not a tax increase,” he explained.
In the USA Today op-ed, Romney said his plan was affordable and reasonable. So if Obamacare’s penalties are even more modest, then the claim that it’s a huge tax increase rings a bit hollow.
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I’m going to have to agree with Rick Santorum when he said people may as well as vote for Obama if Romney is the Republican Nominee.
The former Republican Pennsylvania Senator essentially said that voters would choose to re-elect President Obama if his opponent turned out to be Mitt Romney.
Remember all those pundits who thought SB 1070-loving Florida Senator Marco Rubio was going to be the VEEP? Well, we see Mitt Romney trying to erase his RomneyCare sins with someone like Paul Ryan.
