[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 63 (Tuesday, May 10, 2011)]
[House]
[Page H3119]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1410
                  TAXES, PENALTIES, AND FEES IN PPACA

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, 
billed as a health care bill, is actually a tax bill. It is riddled 
with fees and penalties that will drive up the cost of health care by 
imposing taxes on families and businesses.
  Included in the law was a tax increase on nonmedical expenditures 
from a health savings account. There has always been a 10 percent 
penalty, but now it jumps to 20 percent.
  In addition, beginning next year, employers who have 50 full-time 
employees for the previous calendar year must offer health coverage 
that meets the minimum essential benefit coverage requirement of the 
Secretary of Health and Human Services, and that coverage requirement 
is likely to cost $52 billion over the next 10 years, hardly the way to 
foster job creation in an economy that desperately needs jobs.
  The individual mandate starts out as a tax; then it is a penalty. Oh, 
now it's back to a tax again. The administration creatively changed its 
position when it realized that the mandate was indeed a tax, even 
though it violated the President's own pledge during the campaign not 
to raise taxes on middle class Americans to pass his signature health 
care legislation.
  The taxes in the health care law will affect everyone inevitably and 
cannot help but drive up the cost of health care in this country.

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