30 Days, 30 deceptions - 18th of 30

By 'raindrop'

Taxing Healthcare

Obama said he would NOT tax employer-provided health care benefits and portrayed McCain's plan as " so radical, so out of touch with what you're facing, and so out of line with our basic values."

But that was then and this is now...

Obama's White House budget director Peter Orszag said taxing employer benefits was among several ideas that "most firmly should remain on the table," and some congressional Democrats told the Washington Post that White House officials said Obama would accept such a tax "as long as he didn't have to propose it himself."

Or, to put it another way...

No new taxes on employer health care benefits

Obama took his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, to the mat for suggesting that it might be better to remove the existing health care tax break that individuals get on their employer-sponsored coverage, but return the vast bulk-if not all-of the resulting revenues in the form of health care tax credits. This would theoretically have made coverage both more affordable and portable for everyone. Obama, however, would have none of it, portraying this idea simply as the removal of a tax break. "For the first time in history, he wants to tax your health benefits," he thundered. "Apparently, Sen. McCain doesn't think it's enough that your health premiums have doubled. He thinks you should have to pay taxes on them too."

Yet now Obama is signaling his willingness to go along with a far worse scheme to tax employer-sponsored benefits to fund the $1.6 trillion or so it will cost to provide universal coverage. Contrary to Obama's allegations, McCain's plan did not ultimately entail a net tax increase because he intended to return to individuals whatever money was raised by scrapping the tax deduction. Not so with Obama. He apparently told Sen. Baucus that he would consider the senator's plan for rolling back the tax exclusion that expensive, Cadillac-style employer-sponsored plans enjoy, in order to pay for universal coverage. But, unlike McCain, he has said nothing about putting offsetting deductions or credits in the hands of individuals.

In other words, Obama might well end up doing what McCain never set out to do: Impose a net tax increase on health benefits for the first time in history