Trump signs funding bill, axes Obamacare taxes

FPI / December 23, 2019

In signing government funding legislation on Friday, President Donald Trump repealed $373 billion in Obamacare taxes.

“The taxes were the latest part of Obamacare to get the axe under Trump,” Kimberly Leonard noted in a Dec. 22 report for the Washington Examiner. “In 2017, Republicans sent Trump a tax overhaul bill that zeroed out Obamacare's unpopular tax on the uninsured, known as the ‘individual mandate.’ "

Despite defending Obamacare throughout the Trump presidency, Democrats voted overwhelmingly in favor of the spending deal that repealed the taxes.

Since Republicans, when they held the House until the 2018 midterms, failed to replace most of Obamacare, the Trump administration has been working through administrative actions to alter President Barack Obama’s signature legislation.

“As a result, Obamacare has been reshaped rather than repealed,” Leonard wrote.

The parts of Obamacare which got the axe from Trump were the health insurance tax, which contributed to higher healthcare spending in 2018; the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices; and the so-called “Cadillac tax” which was a levy that was supposed to control spending by imposing a 40 percent tax on expensive employer plans.

Republican leaders on the House Ways and Means Committee celebrated the change, saying they were "working for the American people."

Polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that Republican voters continue to oppose Obamacare.

Trump has also attacked Obamacare through the courts. His administration sided with a lawsuit waged by Republican state officials who said the healthcare law couldn't stand because the individual mandate had been key to the law working.

An appeals court last week agreed the individual mandate was unconstitutional but sent the case back to a federal judge to determine which parts of Obamacare besides the mandate needed to be scrapped.

Despite being unable to invalidate the law quickly, Trump saw the court decision as "a win for all Americans" and agreed the individual mandate was unconstitutional and "the worst element of Obamacare."

Free Press International