Changing Tune, Administration Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax - NYTimes.com

Changing Tune, Administration Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax - NYTimes.com:

WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”

And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce."