Transcript...@
Supreme Court: The Health Care Law And The Individual Mandate“why do you keep calling it a tax?”
Here is, to me, the most important quote in the whole thing...
JUSTICE SCALIA: Is it a tax or not a tax? The President didn't think it was.
GENERAL VERRILLI: The President said it wasn't a tax increase because it ought to be understood as an incentive to get people to have insurance.
I don't think it's fair to infer from that anything about whether that is an exercise of the tax power or not.
It doesn't matter what the President "said", what matters is how the bill is written! He lied and everybody knew it!
And speaking of Congress and what they knew...
So much more...
GENERAL VERRILLI: I don't think that that's a fair characterization of the actions of Congress here, Justice Kagan. On the — December 23rd, a point of constitutional order was called to, in fact, with respect to this law. The floor sponsor, Senator Baucus, defended it as an exercise of the taxing power. In his response to the point of order, the Senate voted 60 to 39 on that proposition. The legislative history is replete with members of Congress explaining that this law is constitutional as an exercise of the taxing power. It was attacked as a tax by its opponents. So I don't think this is a situation where you can say that Congress was avoiding any mention of the tax power.
It would be one thing if Congress explicitly disavowed an exercise of the tax power. But given that it hasn't done so, it seems to me that it's — not only is it fair to read this as an exercise of the tax power, but this Court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power, if it can be upheld on that basis.
And this...
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Why didn't Congress call it a tax, then?
GENERAL VERRILLI: Well -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: You're telling me they thought of it as a tax, they defended it on the tax power. Why didn't they say it was a tax?
GENERAL VERRILLI: They might have thought, Your Honor, that calling it a penalty as they did would make it more effective in accomplishing its objective. But it is — in the Internal Revenue Code it is collected by the IRS on April 15th. I don't think this is a situation in which you can say -
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that's the reason. They thought it might be more effective if they called it a penalty.
GENERAL VERRILLI: Well, I — you know, I don't — there is nothing that I know of that — that illuminates that, but certainly -
One more...
JUSTICE ALITO: Can the — can the mandate be viewed as tax if it does impose a requirement on people who are not subject to the penalty or the tax?
GENERAL VERRILLI: I think it could, for the reasons I — I discussed yesterday. I don't think it can or should be read that way. But if there is any doubt about that, Your Honor, if there is — if — if it is the view of the Court that it can't be, then I think the — the right way to handle this case is by analogy to New York v. United States, in which the — the Court read the shall provision, shall handle the level of radioactive waste as setting the predicate, and then the other provisions were merely incentives to get the predicate met, and
JUSTICE SCALIA: You're saying that all the discussion we had earlier about how this is one big uniform scheme and the Commerce Clause blah, blah, blah, it really doesn't matter. This is a tax and the Federal Government could simply have said, without all of the rest of this legislation, could simply have said everybody who doesn't buy health insurance at a certain age will be taxed so much money, right?
GENERAL VERRILLI: It — it used its powers together to solve the problem of the market not -
JUSTICE SCALIA: Yes, but you didn't need that.
GENERAL VERRILLI — providing for the -
JUSTICE SCALIA: You didn't need that. If it's a tax, it's only — raising money is enough.
GENERAL VERRILLI: It's justifiable under its tax power.
JUSTICE SCALIA: Extraordinary.
Remember who the majority part was and how the votes went down! A Democrat majority shoved a tax down the throat of America and tried to hide what they were doing with stupid ass word games!
Read people and think about the decision handed down.