Obamacare’s doom (George Will)

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

[X-spurt]

It will not stop at Appeals Court. SCOTUS will roll it back to Congress.

[X-spurt]

If you remember back, when it had to go back for some re-write, nasty peelouis had begun loosing a few dems because of “back home” reaction. Dingy-harry could more easily ram it back through the Senate.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Obamacare doesn't meet the first exception because, as George Will wrote, “the proceeds go to the Treasury for the general operations of the federal government, not to fund a particular program," and as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, the penalty is "paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and 'shall be assessed and collected in the same manner' as tax penalties.

Obamacare doesn't meet the second exception because, as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, the individual mandate penalty “is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are” and there are no “negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS, which means the penalty is not a fine assessed to punish unlawful conduct.

Chief Justice Roberts may yet turn out to be a magnificent b-----d. We shall see.

[BuckeyeTexan]

I highly recommend this one, folks. Also, see my explanation at #43 regarding how the Senate bills fails the exceptions test.

FReepmail me to subscribe to or unsubscribe from the SCOTUS ping list.

[Salvation]

Many of us knew from the very beginning that’s its origins were in the Senate.

[Salvation]

**the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals**

Don’t you have your courts mixed up?

Who are the members of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals?

[BuckeyeTexan]

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.

The Court can decide only those legal questions which are before it. The question of the tax's constitutionality under the Origination Clause was not presented (and not argued) in the 2011 Obamacare cases.

Federal courts cannot issue advisory opinions because of the Constitution's case-or-controversy requirement.

[Cheerio]

As nauseating as the ACA is, how the Senate was able to gut a House bill and re write it takes it to new heights of criminality.

AND here is the left's poster boy for this ongoing criminality

[BuckeyeTexan]

Based on the only entity with standing is the House. And anybody suing that’s not a house member will eventually be found to have no standing.

That's incorrect. The courts have ruled on questions under the Origination Clause before where the House was not the petitioner. See United States v. Ashburn.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Will it turn out that the Pelosi/Reid egos were so huge they just ignored sound practice because they just thought they were above it?

We already know that. Remember Pelosi's response to the reporter who asked where the Constitution grants Congress authority to require people to purchase a commercial product?

"Are you serious? Are you serious?!"

[GregNH]

I am not sure what the court could do about in the initial case but by ruling it a tax, which the WH vehemently apposed, the bill is unconstitutional because it did originate in the house and the final bill “deemed” passed was the Senate version. So did Roberts open the door for a ruling on the origins of the bill?

[FredZarguna]

So it's your contention that the DC Court will rule to overturn 0'care, but the government will not pursue, and the SCOTUS will not hear, an appeal of that ruling?

I think you're the one who's mixed up.

[FredZarguna]

The bill produced by the conference committee [your version #3] has to be passed on an up or down vote by both Houses after its been produced. The rules governing that whole process are quite convoluted and torturous, but at the end of the day there has to be a vote.

In fact, if I recall correctly off he top of my head, and I may not -- "it was like, five years ago, dude" -- Dingy Harry got around a necessary motion to recommit by claiming 0'care was part of a budget reconciliation or other special process, which therefore would not require the ordinary 60 votes under Senate rules.

That's one of the reasons why I doubt some of the Republicans in the Senate are really serious about repealing the act, when they say things like, "well, we won't be able to repeal it without 60 votes." Yes, you will. It was passed without 60 votes and you can use the same mechanism to repeal it as well; and now that it's been ruled a tax, you can even sneak its repeal into a budget bill as an amendment -- legitimately.

[FredZarguna]

If the Court overturns 0'care on a violation of the Origination Clause, that is a process error and there would be no opportunity for a rewrite.

It isn't going to, but it's fun to think so.

[teeman8r]

Any attempt now by either the courts or legilature will be seen as an attack on obamas authority and people, thus making his retribution against all opposed to his rule sanctioned by those who are hypnotized by his promises... So much so that i see him sihning his wat to sn executive order. That criminalizes the opposition in the house

[Usagi_yo]

THat would be good news then. I will look over that case.

Cheers

[BuckeyeTexan]

The WH may have been publicly opposed to calling it a tax, but the government argued before SCOTUS that the individual mandate should be upheld as constitutional precisely because it is tax. They won that argument.

What's comical to me is the idea of Verrilli attempting to argue that it is not a tax to avoid the Origination Clause. Roberts does not look favorably on the government changing its arguments. He just authored a decision in March (Marvin M. Brandt Revocable Trust et al., v. United States) wherein he wrote:

The Government loses this case in large part because it won when it argued the opposite in Great Northern R. Co. v. United States.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Also note that in November 2013, 40 House Republican members filed an Amicus Curiae brief in support of Sissel.

[Mercat]

It didn’t really become an issue until Roberts said it was a tax. Before that they totally denied it was a tax.

[Salvation]

I was merely pointing out that everyone was screaming about the Supreme Court when this is being heard by a district Court in D. C.

Who knows what they will do?

Do you know, for sure, that the Supreme court will hear an appeal?