White House Officials Just Called Losing Your Health Insurance a Tax Break

By Rebekah Entralgo, ThinkProgress

20 November 17

13 million more Americans will be uninsured so corporations can get a tax cut.

ffice of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday that the president “is not going to sign a bill that raises taxes on the middle class, period.” Unfortunately for Mulvaney, both the House and Senate tax bills would do just that, but he’s now trying to spin millions of people losing their health insurance as them getting a tax break.

While both plans vary as to what deductions are maintained or repealed and the timing of when certain tax breaks will be implemented, at the center of both plans is a giant tax cut for corporations. Reducing the corporate tax rate from 30 percent to 25 percent is expensive, costing an upwards of $1.5 trillion dollars over the next decade.

The Senate’s solution to pay for it includes the repeal of the individual mandate, a measure in the Affordable Care Act that requires individuals to be covered by health insurance. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this would result in both middle class tax hikes and 13 million more uninsured Americans over the next ten years.

Mick Mulvaney, however, said Sunday there is a “benefit if the repeal goes away” because it is a tax on middle class families. Marc Short, the White House Director of Legislative Affairs made the same argument on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning. Short says the mandate harms middle-income families most and applauds the Senate’s decision to include it in their tax bill.

The White House is appearing to use a 2012 decision by the Supreme Court that deemed the Affordable Care Act constitutional to their advantage. A key part of that decision included classifying the individual mandate as a kind of tax. Republicans are now arguing that since SCOTUS ruled the individual mandate was a tax, it must be addressed in a tax bill; however this sinister maneuver will leave millions of Americans worse off so that corporations can get a tax break.