In September 2009, President Obama disagreed vehemently with the notion that the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate was a tax: “A responsibility to get health insurance is not a tax increase,” he told George Stephanopolous. And even on the eve of oral argument, the president’s Office of Management and Budget told Congress that the mandate was not a tax.

Nevertheless, the Justice Department made precisely the opposite argument in the federal courts, and that argument ultimately persuaded the Supreme Court. Today, the Court held that the individual mandate is a lawful exercise of the Constitution’s tax power.

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