ACA: No "Massive Tax Cut on the Middle Class"

     Don't get me wrong. That's what they're trying to spin it as. This is the GOP's next line. They will seize the words of Chief Justice Roberts to claim this is the biggest tax cut in world history.

     It's nothing new. This is how it always goes. Clinton's tax hike on the rich in 1993 was the largest tax hike in history and then rescinding the Bush tax cuts is the largest tax hike in history so it makes sense that now the ACA is.  The GOP never opposes any tax increase that isn't not just an increase but all of human history's largest.

    In reality this is just the usual alarmist exaggerations:

    "The mandate can indeed be characterized as a tax, as the Court found. But it is not a massive tax hike on the middle class, much less the biggest tax hike in American history. The tax imposed by the individual mandate amounts to either $695 or 2.5 percent of household income for those who don’t have insurance and are not exempt based on income levels. By comparison, the payroll tax cut extension Republicans repeatedly blocked earlier this year would have added 3.1 percentage points to the tax and cost the average family $1,500 a year."

    "The mandate, meanwhile, would hit a small amount of Americans — somewhere between 2 and 5 percent — according to a study from the Urban Institute. The number could be even lower depending on the law’s success: in Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, less than 1 percent of the state’s residents paid the penalty in 2009."

     "The majority of the Affordable Care Act’s other taxes, such as a payroll tax increase and a tax on high-cost health plans, are aimed at upper-income Americans. In exchange, millions of jobs will be created as new people enter the health care system and millions of people will gain access to affordable, quality insurance that they otherwise would not have. And, as we detailed earlier today, the Court’s decision to uphold the entirety of the law will have significant benefits for the nation’s economy."

      http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/06/28/508062/fact-check-mandate-tax-hike/

      We will be hearing this argument a lot, however, so get used it it. Forewarned is forearmed.