Remember what Nancy Pelosi said:
Posted on 07/23/2014 7:14:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s an odd world in which judges are accused of usurping the role of Congress for ruling that the executive branch must follow the text of a law Congress wrote. But that’s what has happened today. In Halbig v. Burwell, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Congress never gave the federal government power to provide subsidies and assess penalties under the Affordable Care Act in states that haven’t established their own health-insurance exchanges.
President Obama and the Congress that passed the law assumed this wouldn’t be a problem: States were expected to go along and establish their own exchanges. When it became clear that many states wouldn’t do so because the law was so unpopular, the IRS just rewrote the law. (It didn’t get any more popular.) Since the IRS made its move, the Democrats who wrote the law have maintained that they intended it that way from the beginning. But the wording they wrote into the law a couple of years before clearly requires otherwise, and that’s what matters.
Thus the ruling from the D.C. Circuit, although a panel from the Fourth Circuit ruled the opposite, also today, arguing that the IRS had reached a plausible interpretation of Obamacare’s text.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
If the provision written in PLAIN LANGUAGE in the bill were not meant to be part of the intent of the bill, why was it not openly debated and reviewed PRIOR to passage?
Act in haste, repent at leisure. Surely this gem of wisdom has surfaced before, in the history of mankind?
This will go to the USSC where not that long ago a penalty was declared to be a tax in a 5-4 decision. If not for this, I might be more optimistic.
RE: This will go to the USSC where not that long ago a penalty was declared to be a tax in a 5-4 decision
Someone in another thread informed me that the attorneys for Obamacare actually argued that it is BOTH a Penalty AND a Tax.
The only way we can find out is to READ the darn thing and determine what it really says.
John Roberts will have no compunction about divining a “you know what we meant” penumbra from the turbid text of the ACA.
The “law” will be seen as intent when its politically convenient, and literal when its politically convenient. The law is whatever liberals want it to be.
Typical of liberals. They want it both ways — when its to their advantage.
I just don’t see a good outcome at the USSC. Hope I’m wrong.
The law is a cluster-f**k that none of those geniuses on the hill even bothered to read (who wrote it I wonder? How long was it sitting in Nacy Pelosi’s desk? ‘We have to pass it to see what’s in it’...). Now it bites them in the ass. I love it!
It was not debated and reviewed because the Democrats wanted to shove it down our throats.
It was not debated because, if we recall, the Senate passed one version of the bill, and then they lost their filibuster proof majority with Scott Brown’s election, so the House had to pass the Senate version of the bill, without being able to change anything. As we know, both House and Senate have to pass identical versions of a bill, for it to become law.
It was not debated because it was a huge 2000 page bill which Democrats didn’t want to debate about. Since they had the votes to force it through, that’s what they did.
And it was not debated because liberals have such hubris, if you will, about their intentions and their policies, that they saw no need to expose their bill to the light of day.
Just my opinion. They were so eager to pass “health care reform” that they didn’t care if there were problems in that law.
It was debated. The intent was to incentivize states to create their own exchanges rather than having the federal government do it. It was both a carrot and a stick. The drafters didn’t count on so many of the states not taking the bait.
This thing called the ACA was written a looooong time ago and was being tweaked along the years just waiting for the opportunity to strike when some dipshit could say something outlandish like “We have to pass it to see what is in it..”. That statement in and of itself should have had this country purchasing tar and feathers end emptying shelves of pitchforks. Sadly, the spoon fed bought it. Who actually wrote it? We need to ask who wants to usurp America. This monstrosity is about control and nothing more.
Tbe Left doesn’t repent at leisure. If only they would!
Instead they’ll just froth at the mouth and accuse everyone of being rayciss and evil.
And no one has challenged the law as unconstitutional as being ruled a tax as it did not originate in the House of Representatives.
Exactly. Good point. The legal trend is not on our side.
Who, which democrats wrote it? There weren't any committee hearings nor floor debate.
It has to be a clear sign of a near dead republic when the public doesn't know exactly who and what groups crafted the most destructive law in American history.
Actually the law was written by the Roman Senate, not the US Congress. And the Emperor of New Rome, Emperor Zero, is rewriting the law on the fly.
When I was about 10, I noticed that Tarzan used the same AAAHHH-EEEE-AHHH! yell, no matter what the situation. When he needed the elephants, the yell brought elephants. When he needed help from the giraffes, the same yell brought giraffes.
Little did I know that decades later, this technique would become ensconced in Constitutional law.
I’m still waiting for the commentariat to ask how any future law can be written when plain language is no constraint on government action.
We are now entering the rule of guns phase.
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