Politics

NRCC on health care ruling: ‘This is a big f***ing tax’

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul by taking a page out of Vice President Biden’s playbook, declaring, “This is a big f***ing tax.”

The Republican campaign organization posted an image with that phrase over Biden and President Obama on Facebook. It is a play off Biden’s embarrassing open-mic moment in 2010 at the signing of the health-care bill, when he was overheard telling Obama that the moment was a “big fucking deal.”

The court on Thursday said Obamacare’s individual mandate is constitutional because it falls under Congress’ authority to tax.

“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court’s opinion.

In a NRCC memo exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, the organization argues that the individual mandate “is now officially among Obamacare’s many taxes on middle class families and small businesses.”

“America’s middle class families will have to pay the overwhelming majority of the individual mandate tax thanks to Obamacare, even though Democrats claimed over and over that the individual mandate was not a tax increase,” the memo reads.

The NRCC makes light of how Democrats — during the fight over the bill — insisted that the mandate was not a tax.

“I absolutely reject that notion,” Obama said in 2009 when asked by ABC News if it could be considered a tax.

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