‘Take Yes For An Answer’: Did Nancy Pelosi Just Admit the Individual Mandate Is a Tax?

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have finally admitted that she and other Democrats lied about the individual mandate. Having just been backed into an inescapable corner by no less an eminence than the United States Supreme Court, which explicitly said that the only way for the individual mandate to pass constitutional muster would be to recast it as a tax, Pelosi may have finally realized she has to acknowledge that reality when questioned by the Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy, while trying as much as possible to dodge the issue by branding any discussion of the mandate’s nature as “Washington talk”:

“The President has said himself on numerous occasions that the individual mandate is not a tax. Do you think the individual mandate in the health care law is a tax?” Ballasy asked.

“The court has upheld the legislation,” Pelosi stonewalled. “Call it what you will. It is a step forward for America’s families, and you know what? Take yes for an answer. This is a very good thing for the American people. What you’re talking about here is Washington talk.”

“Washington talk?“ If getting Pelosi to admit the truth is ”Washington talk,” then Washington could use more of it. Her hemming and hawing answer, and the extremely vague line “take yes for an answer” notwithstanding, it is true that the individual mandate is a tax, and if Pelosi is even willing to hint at that reality, then at least she’s made a baby step toward integrity.

Then again, it‘s not as though Pelosi’s opinion about what the individual mandate is or is not counts for much. Remember when she predicted the law would be upheld 6-3 on the basis of no evidence whatsoever? Wrong.

What about when she said “the power of Congress to regulate health care is essentially unlimited” because of the commerce clause? Wrong again. In fact, even the liberal justices joined with Chief Justice Roberts in striking down the law’s justification under the commerce clause.

This case has gone Pelosi’s way, no doubt about it, but her credibility, to the extent that it was still even a concept that can be mentioned in polite company, has been thoroughly gutted by over two years’ worth of faulty predictions about it. And that, by the way, is not “Washington talk.” That is reality. Which is going to catch up with the Obamacare tax increases very quickly.