Mnuchin: ObamaCare Mandate ‘an Unfair Tax on Poor People’

‘I think right now our objective is to keep it in’

WALLACE: I want to ask you about another aspect of the Senate bill, and that is the individual mandate. The — not the House bill, but the Senate bill repeals the individual mandate in Obamacare. There’s — it’s — some people like it in the Senate, some people don’t. Susan Collins has expressed concern about it. Lisa Murkowski has expressed concern about it. Is that, in effect, a bargaining chip? In other words, if you find it’s costing you more votes than it’s getting you, then you would support taking the individual mandate out?

MNUCHIN: Well, let me first say this is all about getting this past in the Senate. That’s the objective. This isn’t a bargaining chip. The president thinks we should get rid of it. I think we should get rid of it. It’s an unfair tax on poor people, to think that you put a penalty on people who can’t afford to buy medical policies is just fundamentally unfair. That’s what this is all about.

WALLACE: But if it — it does have a political impact. It wasn’t in your original proposal for tax reform. It’s been added in afterwards. I guess what I’m asking is, could you live with it if it’s taken out?

MNUCHIN: I think right now our objective is to keep it in. It’s a — it provides a big tax cut for the middle class. It gets rid of the penalty. But we’re going to work with the Senate as we go through this.

What’s critical here is, we have the House that passed a bill. That’s a very big deal. We got it done. We got it out of the Finance Committee. It’s going to be in the floor right after Thanksgiving. And we’re going to get something to the president to sign this year because this is all about creating growth in the economy.

And you can see what’s going on. People have a lot of confidence in the Trump economic plan. You see that in the market. You see that in investing. And this is about delivering tax cuts to the American people.

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