Baucus Earns Place on 2009 “Naughty” List

From Americans for Tax Reform on Tuesday, December 15, 2009 4:49 PM

Sen. Max Baucus has earned a place under the “Naughty” column on Americans for Tax Reform’s 2009 Naughty and Nice List after being caught telling a brazen lie on the floor of the United States Senate: Claiming that the Senate healthcare bill would not raise taxes.

Speaking on the U.S. Senate floor on Nov. 30, Baucus said:

“I have also heard it argued that health care reform will raise taxes. That, too, is false.”

In reality, the 2,074-page Senate healthcare bill uses the term “tax” 183 times and contains 18 separate tax increases.

Continuing his remarks on the Senate floor, Baucus said:

“In fact, health care reform will provide billions of dollars in tax relief to help American families and small businesses afford quality health insurance—tax cuts. The Joint Tax Committee—again bipartisan and which serves both the House and the Senate—tells us, for example, that our bill would provide $40 billion in the tax cuts in the year 2017 alone—$40 billion in tax cuts in the year 2017.”

In reality, the official tax score for the bill is provided by the Joint Tax Committee (JCT) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). In 2017 alone, they report a net tax hike of $132.5 billion – not a tax cut as Sen. Baucus claims. Over the ten-year scoring window, they report a net tax hike of $857.9 billion.

“Max Baucus is lying to the people of Montana,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “Or he’s speaking from ignorance and he hasn’t actually read the bill. If he did, he might have stumbled across one of the eighteen painful tax increases it contains.”

ATR’s full 2009 “Naughty and Nice” list can be viewed here.

Click here for a printable PDF

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Baucus Earns Place on 2009 “Naughty” List

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