U.S. SENATE — U.S. Senator Steve Daines blasted the Obamacare tax penalty that targets low income Americans who did not buy insurance required by Obamacare’s heavy handed mandates.
In his remarks, Daines previewed an amendment he wants adopted into legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare to return money to the 7,973,490 Americans who paid the Poverty Tax to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Click HERE to watch Daines’ remarks.
Click HERE to download Daines’ remarks.
Daines’ remarks as prepared are below:
“Mr. President – Karen from Missoula County wrote to me about how her daughter can’t afford to buy insurance. Obamacare imposes a tax penalty on Americans who don’t buy insurance and in 2014 and 2015 alone, they collected over $5 billion dollars in fines. Billions more were collected in 2016.
“It turns out that this tax has hurt poor and middle-income Americans the worst. I call it Obamacare’s poverty tax.
“For Karen from Missoula, paying Obamacare’s poverty tax is cheaper for her – so she pays the IRS and doesn’t have health insurance.
“Debbie from Roundup lost her own health insurance coverage. She couldn’t afford the $1,700 monthly premiums. So she, too, was subject to Obamacare’s poverty tax and was forced to pay the IRS.
“And Mike from Kalispell – he’s concerned for his son who can’t afford a health insurance plan, either. The poverty tax he’s forced to pay to the IRS is expensive and it’s hard to come up with the money to pay it.
“There are American families that can’t afford health insurance because of Obamacare – and what does Obamacare do? It fines them. Adding insult to injury.
“Mr. President – These are just a few of the stories I’ve received from my constituents back in Montana where Obamacare is doing more harm than good. In fact, 40% of the 34,250 Montanans who paid Obamacare’s poverty tax made less than $25,000. 80% made less than 50,000. And instead of helping these vulnerable Montanans make ends meet, Obamacare put a poverty tax on them for being too poor to afford health insurance. Montanans paid nearly $7.8 million dollars to the IRS.
“This individual mandate, this poverty tax is immoral. It’s unfair. It’s a tax on freedom. And it needs to be repealed immediately. And those poverty taxes must be paid back to the poor people who paid them.
“Our friends across the aisle will say we want to get rid of taxes on the rich, but the rich aren’t paying this tax, the poor are! And I think they should be paid back, which is why I’ll have an amendment on the floor when we debate that will do just that.
“The poverty tax is just one of the many problems of Obamacare.
“Obamacare promised to lower insurance rates, but costly federal mandates on insurance companies raised rates.
“It promised more choice, but mandates removed competition from the marketplace.
“It promised Americans they could keep their doctors, but plans became too unaffordable for folks to keep their original plans and doctors.
“It took a program designed to care for the most vulnerable in our society and made it unsustainable.
“Montanans deserve better than poverty taxes, increasing premiums, and a shrinking market. They have waited seven years for us to repeal and replace Obamacare – it’s time we repeal Obamacare and start over.”
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