It’s No Longer Obamacare — It’s IRScare

Another day, another scandal (or three). Whether the issue is investigating reporters, fumbling Benghazi or harassing Tea Partiers, people across the political spectrum finally are challenging the once-Teflon Obama administration. His groupies in the press are loath to criticize him directly, but the president’s “no drama” public façade is crumbling faster than a Kardashian marriage.

Some in the press compare the scandal tsunami to Watergate while the more daring sort are even breathing the word “impeachment.” The left and the talking heads can say what they want, but let’s hope Republicans avoid the I-word entirely.

Barack Obama isn’t the problem. Progressivism is.

If President Obama retired tomorrow so he could focus on golf, body surfing and autobiographies 3 through 13, would the country immediately transform into a liberty-minded paradise? Of course not.

President Biden (shudder) or another Democrat placeholder would grab the wheel of the sprawling bureaucracy and demand new departments with bigger budgets to better tell citizens how to eat, drink, work, play and pray. Big-government Republicans would jump aboard Uncle Joe’s Choo-Choo Train of Change insisting it’s the only way to prove bipartisan goodwill. 

Worse still, the slow-mo train wreck of Obamacare would be chugging down a parallel track, taking out jobs, hospitals and health plans along the way. With or without President Obama, the “Affordable” Care Act can cause significant damage through sheer momentum.

After this president is gone, his legislation remains. And who will enforce it? The deeply unpopular, conservative-profiling, “mistakes were made” Internal Revenue Service. (Yes, I realize that line just signed me up for an audit.)

Obamacare is no longer Obama’s — it belongs to the Beltway bureaucracy. Health and Human Services is still convening committees, sub-committees and sub-sub-committees to convert the 2,400-page law into 20,000+ pages of regulations. Meanwhile, the IRS is staffing up to impose these byzantine requirements on a skeptical public.

The fact is, it’s no longer accurate to call it Obamacare. It is IRScare.

The federal healthcare law demands a bunch of tax hikes, millions in new IRS funding and nearly 2,000 full-time IRS employees to implement. The law requires insurance companies to give the IRS a treasure trove of personal information, including whether or not each citizen has purchased “government approved” health insurance. And if you don’t play ball, the IRS will fine… I mean, tax you for your insolence.

But not to worry—all of your personal, medical, and financial data will be stored in a secure, new government database. The IRS promises they won’t release any of your private information to left-wing groups, the press or the Senate Majority Leader. And they certainly wouldn’t treat you differently if you, say, belong to a Tea Party or write an article like this.

If the federal healthcare law is allowed to stand, its public face will be the IRS. There is little to gain by impeaching a lone politician. What must be impeached is the idea of big government and IRScare.

Follow Jon on Twitter at @ExJon.