In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.

But he could look it up — in the bill.

Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax”...

President Obama and ABC News' George Stephanopoulos got in a testy sparring match Sunday over whether the president's health care plan includes a tax increase, leading the host to look up the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of taxes.

In the interview airing Sunday, Stephanopoulos pressed the president on his plan to require people to purchase health insurance.

"Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't. How is that not a tax?" the host asked...

The new health care plan unveiled Wednesday by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., raises 60 percent of its revenues from just one provision -- a 35 percent tax on high-end health care policies.

The tax isn't on the people who receive the benefits but on the insurance companies that provide them.

"The real game, at the end of the day to simplify it, is they have to pretend that they're getting some money out of somebody who is not a voter," said Tom Miller, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Such as an insurance company. But most analysts say the effect will be the same because the cost will be passed on...

In the next 16 days, Congress will spend more than $3 trillion in taxpayer money. To cover these programs, some Americans will be working up to three hours of each day.

Vast amounts of that money will be spent in the form of earmarks, specially designated pet projects that members of Congress use to bring federal funds back to their home states. Since 44 congressmen make no earmarks at all, that means the rest are doing more than their share. For example, in the House, just 4 percent of members took home 32 percent of all the bacon -- and all were members of the Defense Appropriations Committee.

With Washington bleeding green, some congressmen -- the princes of pork -- are treating you like a giant ATM and can't spend your money fast enough...

A provision in President Obama's health care reform plan that requires businesses to offer health insurance to their workers or face a federal tax would cost employers at least $49 billion dollars a year, putting 5.2 million employees at risk of unemployment or underemployment, according to a new study.

"Health care reform is not going to be free," said economist Mark Wilson, who authored the study, which was commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Under the provision, known as the play-or-pay mandate, another 10.2 million employees will face stunted wages and the loss of their benefits as employers try to find ways to fund the mandates...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered a new strategy Thursday for breaking a deadlock over a series of expired and expiring tax provisions.

In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., McConnell suggested that Congress could offset the cost of the extensions by reducing an increase in non-defense discretionary spending that Democrats have proposed.