Democrats may have to admit Obamacare tax increase

USA Today reports:

Delaying Obamacare — the once unthinkable — has now become a potential reality. And it's not just a Republican idea any longer. Ten Senate Democrats, all in vulnerable seats, have proposed extending the healthcare law's enrollment period because people still can't sign up at Healthcare.gov.

More precisely, they seek to delay collecting the tax penalty for failing to buy insurance under Obamacare's individual mandate. However, this congressional retreat raises a difficult political question for the president and congressional Democrats: They must now admit that Obamacare's individual mandate is actually a tax, something they've resisted doing in public for years.

The individual insurance mandate can't be a requirement to buy insurance because that unprecedented demand was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Instead, the court identified the mandate as a tax on millions of Americans. If that's true, it must be forthrightly identified as such and scored by the Congressional Budget Office. The White House and congressional Democrats can no longer have it both ways.

Ouch.