CBO: 6 Million Middle Class Americans Will Be Hit With Obamacare Tax

The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has released some bad news for President Obama and his signature Health Care law the Affordable Care Act. The CBO has found that almost 6 million Americans, the majority of them in the middle class, will be hit with a tax penalty for failing to comply with the insurance mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act.

The number of 6 million is significantly higher than the first estimates released by Democrats when the bill was still being debated. Critics are saying this is another example of how the President has broken promises in relation to his Health Care Initiative.

The CBO, a nonpartisan group of number crunchers that work for Congress, had originally estimated that less than 4 million Americans would be hit with the tax surcharge in 2016 when the law is fully implemented.

The cost of the penalty s around $1,200 per year per family. Obama had campaigned on a promise to not raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 for a family of four. The CBO estimates says that the vast majority of those that will be hit with the surcharge will make significantly less than that.

Representative Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee said:

“The bad news and broken promises from Obamacare just keep piling up,”

A spokeswoman for the Obama Administration, Erin Shields Britt of the Health and Human Services Department, shrugged off the statistic and said that less than 2 percent of Americans will be affected by the penalty. She also suggested that those who don’t purchase health care should begin stepping up and beginning to do so as part of their civic responsibilities.

Brit said:

“This (analysis) doesn’t change the basic fact that the individual responsibility policy will only affect people who can afford health care but choose not to buy it. We’re no longer going to subsidize the care of those who can afford to buy insurance but make a choice not to buy it.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul slammed the news from the CBO and pointed the Romney campaign’s anger at the Obama Administration saying:

“Even more of the middle-class families who President Obama promised would see no tax increase will in fact see a massive tax increase thanks to Obamacare,”

Romney has recently released his own proposals for health care should he be elected and able to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He instituted a similar law in Massachusetts when he was governor there.