(CBS News) Two days after his top adviser insisted otherwise, Mitt Romney on Wednesday told CBS News chief political correspondent Jan Crawford that President Obama's individual mandate - upheld last week by the Supreme Court - is "a tax."

"The Supreme Court has spoken, and while I agreed with the dissent, that's taken over by the fact that the majority of the court said it's a tax, and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There's no way around that," the presumptive GOP presidential nominee told Crawford in an exclusive interview, referring to the court's 5-4 ruling that largely upheld the president's signature health care law, with the individual mandate as a tax.

"I said that I agreed with the dissent, and the dissent made it very clear that they felt it was unconstitutional," Romney continued. "But the dissent lost - it's in the minority."

The individual mandate is uniquely problematic for Romney, whose health care legislation as Massachusetts governor also included a mandate. But as an anti-tax increase candidate, Romney has relied on the argument that at the state level, governors can tax on mandate under "police powers" - a fact that Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts noted in his opinion.

Still, Romney's remarks contradict a backpedaling maneuver Monday by his senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom. After the campaign had initially hopped aboard with critics saying the court's ruling indicated the health care law is a massive tax increase on Americans, Fehrnstrom - no doubt eyeing potential backlash relating to Romney's own past mandate - told MSNBC that Romney "agreed with the dissent written by Justice Scalia which very clearly stated that the mandate was not a tax."