So if the White House is going
to
continue to insist that the mandate is not a tax but a penalty,
despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that the mandate is only
constitutionally viable as a tax, then how about we resolve this
issue formally, and settle things once and for all?
Writing at The Volokh Conspiracy, David Bernstein has a clever
idea for how that might be accomplished:

I’d schedule a new vote in the House on the individual mandate,
but replace the “penalty language” with language specifically
acknowledging that the “penalty” is actually a tax. If the
Democrats vote “aye,” they’ve acknowledged breaking the Obama
pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class. If the
Democrats–specifically those who already voted for the mandate–vote
“nay”, what becomes of the tax argument in future litigation? Seems
to me that Roberts was only able to argue that the mandate is a tax
because no one [officially, by Congressional vote] specifically
said it wasn’t. At least it would look very peculiar that the Court
upheld the law on a theory that Congressional supporters of the law
refuse to adopt.

If the White House is so certain that the mandate is not a tax
but a penalty, then administration officials shouldn’t mind other
Democrats saying so formally and codifying this distinction into
the law.