Posted on 02/24/2015 7:53:56 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three years ago, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cast the tie-breaking vote in a ruling that saved President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform. As the high court prepares to weigh another challenge that could shatter Obamacare, a review of Roberts’ recent votes and opinions suggest he could again sway the case the government's way.
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
This case will came down to what the DEMOCRATS intended vs. what they were forced to compromise as a combined legislature after the election of Scott Brown as the Republican "40th vote."
The question is whether Roberts will give back to Democrats what they intentionally gave away now that Brown is no longer in the Senate to complain?
Will Roberts undermine the concept of good-faith negotiation by giving the Democrats what they really wanted all along but were politically unable to attain?
Republicans intended things, too, but were only able to politically attain the few concessions that they received, such as no federal subsidies in stat es with no state exchanges. If Roberts takes that away, we might as well have a new amendment that Legislative intent is only what Democrats say it is at any given time.
-PJ
If there is an ambiguity then legislative history may be referenced. There is no ambiguity, even if there were the legislative history does not help them. The subsidizes were and are an inducement to states to establish exchanges. And Gruber’s statements to that effect are the cherry on top.
The central planners didn’t plan on states rejecting the inducements.
If you are a Democrat with a dark complexion you can pick and choose which laws you want to follow. If not, you will likely get sent to a federal penitentiary if you ignore laws you don't like.
Either bow to the will of Our Glorious Leader or some time getting re-educated.
One of the fundamental principles of statutory construction is that you do not construe a statute in a manner so as to render extraneous words that are used in the statute.
The statute says that subsidies are for insurance obtained on an “Exchange established by the State under section 1311.” The Democrats want to “interpret” the statute to provide subsidies for insurance obtained on any “Exchange” and delete the text “established by the State under section 1311.”
Exactly.
Wikipedia actually has a decent description of the negotiation that led to the supposed "typo." It was no typo at all; it was intended compromise.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - Senate:
The Senate began work on its own proposals while the House was still working on the Affordable Health Care for America Act. Instead, the Senate took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members. As the United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House, the Senate took up this bill since it was first passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill was then used as the Senate's vehicle for their healthcare reform proposal, completely revising the content of the bill. The bill as amended would ultimately incorporate elements of proposals that were reported favorably by the Senate Health and Finance committees. With the Republican minority in the Senate vowing to filibuster any bill they did not support, requiring a cloture vote to end debate, 60 votes would be necessary to get passage in the Senate. At the start of the 111th Congress, Democrats had only 58 votes; the Senate seat in Minnesota ultimately won by Al Franken was still undergoing a recount, and Arlen Specter was still a Republican.To reach 60 votes, negotiations were undertaken to satisfy the demands of moderate Democrats, and to try to bring several Republican senators aboard; particular attention was given to Bob Bennett, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, and Olympia Snowe. Negotiations continued even after July 7 — when Franken was sworn into office, and by which time Specter had switched parties — due to disagreements over the substance of the bill, which was still being drafted in committee, and because moderate Democrats hoped to win bipartisan support. Then, on August 25, before the bill could come up for a vote, Ted Kennedy—a longtime healthcare reform advocate—died, depriving Democrats of their 60th vote. Before Kennedy's seat was filled, attention was drawn to Snowe because of her vote in favor of the draft bill in the Finance Committee on October 15, but she explicitly stated that this did not mean she would support the final bill. Paul Kirk was appointed as Senator Kennedy's temporary replacement on September 24.
After the Finance Committee vote, negotiations turned to the demands of moderate Democrats, whose votes would be necessary to break the anticipated Republican filibuster. Majority leader Harry Reid focused on satisfying the Democratic caucus's centrist members until the holdouts came down to Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who caucused with Democrats, and Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat, representing Nebraska. Lieberman, despite intense negotiations with Reid in search of a compromise, refused to support a public option, agreeing to vote for the bill only if the provision were not included, although it had majority support in Congress. His demand was met. There was debate among the bill's supporters over the importance of the public option, although the vast majority of supporters concluded it was a minor part of the reform overall, and Congressional Democrats' fight for it won various concessions, including conditional waivers allowing states to set up state-based public options such as Vermont's Green Mountain Care.
It's clear that the removal of federal exchanges (the "public option") was the result of compromises made to get the bill passed. Now, Democrats want the Court to say that they always intended for all states to get federal subsidies.
-PJ
“If you’re a state and you don’t set up your exchange that means your citizens don’t get tax credits.” - J. Gruber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtnEmPXEpr0&feature=youtu.be&t=31m25s
An excellent resource:
-PJ
Financial IncentivesFurther evidence of this preference is that the PPACA’s authors created large financial incentives to encourage states to establish Exchanges. The Act authorizes the Secretary of Health and Human Services to provide unlimited funding for states to cover the start-up costs of establishing Exchanges. As of January 2013, the Secretary had issued a total of $3.526 billion in Exchange grants to states. The Secretary has announced these ‘‘start-up’’ grants will be available through 2019. In contrast, the PPACA’s authors failed to authorize any funding for HHS to create federal Exchanges. Unlimited start-up grants and a lack of funding for federal Exchanges appear not only in the PPACA but also in both antecedent bills reported by the Finance and HELP committees.
Making credits and subsidies available solely through state-run Exchanges is consistent with the PPACA’s modus operandi of using financial incentives to elicit a desired behavior. Under the Act, individuals who fail to obtain health insurance must pay a penalty. Large employers that fail to offer required health benefits likewise must pay a penalty.
Many statutes seek to encourage state cooperation by threatening to cut off funding to recalcitrant states. The PPACA contains this feature in other provisions such as the Medicaid expansion. Under the Act as passed, states that failed to expand their Medicaid programs to those below 138 percent of the federal poverty level would have lost all federal Medicaid grants, which account for 12 percent of state revenues. The Act imposes a ‘‘maintenance of effort’’ requirement on states’ Medicaid programs that only lifts upon certification of an Exchange ‘‘established by the State under section 1311.’’
States that opt to establish an Exchange may receive unlimited start-up funds from HHS if, ‘‘as determined by the Secretary,’’ the state makes adequate progress toward establishing an Exchange, implements other parts of the Act, and ‘‘meet[s] such other benchmarks as the Secretary may establish.’’ This feature------conditioning the continued availability of start-up funds on state cooperation------appears in the HELP committee bill as well. It is hardly a departure for the Act to condition the availability of tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies on state cooperation.
The language in Sections 1401 and 1402 restricting credits and subsidies to state-created Exchanges is more than just consistent with the rest of the Act. It is integral to Section 1311’s directive that states ‘‘shall’’ create an Exchange. Because it likely creates a larger financial incentive than the Medicaid ‘‘maintenance of effort’’ requirement, it is the primary sanction imposed on states that do not establish Exchanges. It thus animates Section 1311’s ‘‘shall.’’ To ignore it as the IRS has would sap that directive of most of its force.
As noted above, the federal government cannot actually force states to create Exchanges, as this would constitute unconstitutional commandeering. The federal government can, however, utilize a combination of positive and negative incentives to induce state cooperation------in this case, subsidies for creating Exchanges and the threat of a federally run Exchange if a state does not create its own.
Such incentives are common. Various federal programs, including Medicaid, condition the receipt of federal funding on state acceptance of the federal government’s conditions. In this context, limiting the availability of tax credits to insurance purchased in state-run Exchanges can be seen as just one more inducement for state cooperation: the PPACA threatens states with the loss of tax credits for state residents if they do not create an Exchange.
[ ]
Antecedent BillsBoth the Finance bill and the HELP bill withheld subsidies from taxpayers whose state governments failed to establish an Exchange or otherwise failed to implement the bills’ requirements.
The PPACA’s closest antecedent was the Finance Committee- reported ‘‘America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009’’ (S. 1796). The relevant language in the PPACA is nearly identical to that of the Finance bill. Indeed, the four ways Section 1401 confines tax credits to state-run Exchanges appear almost verbatim in the Finance bill. The HELP bill even more explicitly withheld credits in states that failed to implement its requirements, and it employed that strategy to encourage state cooperation even if the federal government created the Exchange. If a state sought to establish its own ‘‘Gateway’’ (i.e., Exchange) then the HELP bill provided that ‘‘any resident of that State who is an eligible individual shall be eligible for credits’’------but only after the Secretary determined that the state had (1) created a qualified Gateway, (2) enacted legislation imposing various health insurance regulations on the state’s individual and small-group markets, and (3) enacted legislation subjecting its state and local governments to the bill’s employer mandate. If a state failed to meet these criteria, its residents would be ineligible for credits. When an ‘‘establishing state’’ fell out of compliance, the HELP bill went so far as to revoke credits that state residents had already been receiving.
This man bends his knee to no one, save He who made me. I was born free; and I will die that way.
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