ORWELLIAN: "SHARED RESPONSIBILITY PAYMENTS"

Once upon a time, Dear Leader promoted his health care plan by insisting that the individual mandate wasn't a tax.  Then, his minions argued before the Supreme Court that it was a tax.  But guess what?  The regime doesn't want you to think about all that.  So instead of calling the penalty a tax (the Supreme Court decided that ObamaCare is constitutional because the mandate is a tax) it is to be referred to only as the "shared responsibility payment."

The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) final rule on Obamacare's individual mandate, released this week, uses the term "Shared Responsibility Payments" 63 times to describe the mandate's non-compliance penalty, which the Supreme Court in 2012 defined as a tax.

The 75-page rule published by the IRS, which is tasked with enforcing Obamacare as the law is fully implemented in 2014, is entitled "Shared Responsibility Payment for Not Maintaining Minimum Essential Coverage."

While the Obama administration originally pitched the individual mandate as a penalty, not a tax, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ruled in June 2012 that Obamacare is only constitutional because the individual mandate is technically a tax.

Using the term "shared responsibility payment" to refer to what was legally defined as a tax might constitute an act of dishonesty on the part of the Obama administration, according to one expert.