Obamacare’s doom (George Will)

Washington Post ^ | May 2, 2014 | By George Will

[PubliusMM]

This issue was raised and noted at the time the ACA was being hatched. The idea that the Senate could gut a proposed bill from the House, replace its contents with completely new language, completely different subject, is a stretch of the rules of the Senate and of the House.
HOWEVER, given all that, I will not be surprised to see SCOTUS uphold this POS, yet again, granting license to this procedural overreach.

It’s time to take back the country. Dumping ACA would be a great place to start. But, I don’t see it happening on this case. I very much want to be wrong.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What I don’t understand is WHY the Senate did it??? Pelosi and the democrats were in charge of the House. Why did they do this in the Senate rather than just write it in the House?

IIRC Scott Brown made them do it. He ran, and won (in Massachusetts!), on the platform of being the 40th vote against cloture on the ACA.

The clock was running out, and they had to get the deed done before Brown took office.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

What puzzles me is why Scalia et al didn’t point out this problem with ruling ACA constitutional on the grounds that it was a tax, seeing that if it was a tax the bill was invalid because it originated in the Senate. ‘course, since nobody thought going in that it was a tax, the fact of its origination in the House wasn’t a fact in evidence . . .

[Liz]

Thanks for the insightful analysis. Will points out that the Democrat-controlled Senate passed Obamacare on an historic straight party-line vote "after a series of unsavory transactions that purchased the assent of several shrewdly extortionate Democrats."

They'd get better results by going after the $4.3 billion "Louisisana Purchase."

THE PAPER TRAIL IS HUGE Sen Landrieu (Scumocrat-LA) sold her aye vote in what Forbes Magazine dubbed "The 'Louisiana Purchase" that included a massive $4.3 Billion to Landrieu.

FORBES REPORTED the Democrats’ nailed Landrieu’s support for Obamacare w/ a greenback bribe. Landrieu, critics believe, pledged her vote in exchange for some $200 million more additional federal funds for Louisiana. Except that, due to a drafting error, the law ended up giving Louisiana $4.3 billion: more than twenty times the assigned amount. MORE HERE http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

How $4.3 billion to Landrieu was attached to the Obamacare bill, and how Obama and Reid failed to catch and fix it, is yet another indictment of the Obamacare atrocity. The payoff to Landrieu should be investigated as an indication of how EVERY Democrat came to vote for Obamacare.

===============================================

BACKSTORY In the fall of 2009, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was trying to get the necessary 60 Dimocrat votes to pass the Affordable Care Act. He needed every Dim on board, which gave waffling senators a great deal of leverage. In Landrieu's case, she connivingly saw that selling her aye vote could get her maybe $200 million federal dollars. Obama complied--- Reid chalked up another vote for Obamacare---and the $4.3 Landrieu giveaway was attached to the Obamacare bill.

<><> Where'd the money go, Obama? <><>

[xzins]

I agree that some kind of time restraint like you point out could have been the reason, tbt even that leaves questions in my mind and doesn’t make make sense to me.

Pelosi could have rammed through some barebones thing that she called the affordable care act and the Senate could then have changed it to its fuller form.

Or, probably they had the thing being written for years, they could have simply taken what was written and rammed it through the House, and then given it to the Senate.

I think they’re just so used to ignoring the Constitution that that played into it. They just do what they want and think they’ll get away with it because they think they’re special. (And most of the time they do get away with it.)

[Liz]

We should not forget that Obamacare is a HUGE voter fraud machine----plugging unsuspecting enrollees into Democrat voter rolls w/ a huge slush fund at Dummycrats disposal.

==================================================

<><> Local couple upset after receiving pre-marked voter registration card from "Covered California" (Cali O/Care)
10news | 03-29-2014 | Preston Phillips / FR Posted by Kevin in California

A local couple called 10News concerned after they received an envelope from the state's Obamacare website, Covered California. Inside was a letter discussing voter registration and a registration card pre-marked with an "x" in the box next to Democratic Party.

<><> The Oregon Exchange reported it "accidentally" enrolled 4000 latinos (AKA the new Democrat voters).

=============================================

Turns out Obamacare is a vehicle for consolidating Dummycrat power.....w/ a multi-billion dollar slush fund.

The Untraceable $8 Billion ObamaCare PR Budget---truly govt fraud at its finest. Egged on by Pelosi, no one in Congress told Americans about Section 4002---which mandates an $8B untraceable fund to "promote" Obamacare (apparently b/c Boobamba had so little confidence in his signature legislation). And remember, taxpayers....once in the hands of the Dummycrat criminal hordes, the tax billions are untraceable.

================================================

ACA SEC. 4002. PREVENTION AND PUBLIC HEALTH FUND.

(a) PURPOSE. It is the purpose of this section to establish a Prevention and Public Health Fund (referred to in this section as the ‘‘Fund’’), to be administered through the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary, to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs.

(b) FUNDING.—There are hereby authorized to be appropriated, and appropriated, to the Fund, out of any monies in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated—

(1) for fiscal year 2010, $500,000,000;
(2) for fiscal year 2011, $750,000,000;
(3) for fiscal year 2012, $1,000,000,000;
(4) for fiscal year 2013, $1,250,000,000;
(5) for fiscal year 2014, $1,500,000,000; and
(6) for fiscal year 2015, and each fiscal year thereafter, $2,000,000,000.

(c) USE OF FUND.—The Secretary shall transfer amounts in the Fund to accounts within the Department of Health and Human Services to increase funding, over the fiscal year 2008 level, for programs authorized by the Public Health Service Act, for prevention, wellness, and public health activities including prevention research and health screenings, such as the Community Transformation grant program, the Education and Outreach Campaign for Preventive Benefits, and immunization programs.

(d) TRANSFER AUTHORITY.—The Committee on Appropriations of the Senate and the Committee on Appropriations of the House of may provide for the transfer of funds in the Fund to eligible activities under this section, subject to subsection (c).

[ballplayer]

Problem is this is not an unusual occurrence as bad as it is

[Elsie]

He is writing gotcha columns on facts that were brought up here in FreeRepublic forums within weeks of Obamaracare passage.

The Intelligence of the Crowd.

[DAC21]

“His “tax” originated in the Senate, not the House, and that isn't Constitutional”

And one wonders if Thomas, Scalia, or Kennedy even mentioned this in their dissent? Certainly one of these “brilliant” individuals had to know this /s

[DAC21]

“From what I understand someone has to be subject to the tax before they can bring suit. This year is the first tax year that can happen”

My understanding as well. Maybe Drudge can get the ball rolling since he paid his estimated Obamacare quarterly tax already.

[VRW Conspirator]

Sorry folks. I going to give this a great big “yawn”. Obamacare will not be ruled unconstitutional by any court.

Yes. I hope I am wrong.

[Mangia E Statti Zitto]

The Senate HAD to do it that way because the pesky election of Scott Brown meant the super majority was gone. They only had a few days to get ANYTHING passed before the guy was sworn in. That’s why the bill was such a mess. Then that EXACT bill had to pass the House.

[RetSignman]

[Fraxinus]

I agree with you that Roberts will find some reason to avoid the origination clause, for the non-constitutional, but practical reason that no judge wants to be involved in saying the Legislature followed its own rules.

I believe that there is a history of laws where bill 1 passed the house, bill 2 passed the senate, and the conference committee produced bill 3 which was signed by the president, where all three bills had little to nothing in common.

[Smokin' Joe]

Funny thing about legal types, they are masters of parsing phrases. The relevant issue was one of whether the penalty was legal. To make a penalty legal, Roberts made it a tax. Unfortunately, the issue of whether the tax was legal (by virtue of its origin) was not what was in contention--and none had been taxed, so none could show damage, so no one but a member of the House of Representatives would have standing on that issue in the eyes of the Court.

They only rule on the issue brought before them, and that can be very narrow indeed.

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

Trust me, Roberts will find a way to twist this into a legally binding nightmare. He is seriously compromised. Obama OWNS him.

[The Antiyuppie]

Dude, that was like, five years ago.

[CaptainK]

I try to stay on top of things but I honestly didn’t know about this shell bill.

Unbelievable.

[stevem]

I think Will is a bit optimistic. Roberts gutted the language to make it fly in the first place.

They should have no problem grinding this tax thing to fit.

[X-spurt]

The MSM is deathly quiet, because they recognize that peelousi and dingy-harry stupidly finagled it from the Senate making “origination” the poison pill to which Roberts assisted them in swallowing by ruling it a tax (revenue).

Following the giddy whirlwind passage, the “We Won” dems thought they had been able to not make it not subject to Origination Clause by declaring it a fine (not revenue), to wit the SCOTUS proclaimed it a tax.

When the SCOTUS returns it back to Congress for re-write there is zero the dems can do to revive, unless of course they somehow regained majorities in the House and Senate come November.

Once is ruled out, how many think the insurance industry does not have full contingency plans to go right back to before nobamacare? With some minor price increase, naturally “to compensate for their trouble”.