Posted on 07/01/2012 2:22:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
It's a penalty. It's a penalty. It's a penalty. This is what White House officials are arguing despite Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on ObamaCare classifying the healthcare legislation as....a tax. Friday White House Press Secretary argued ObamaCare isn't a tax, but a penalty. Today, White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew argued the same thing. Remember, ObamaCare was "sold" or shoved down the throats of the American people as a penalty to avoid the Obama administration looking like President Obama was raising taxes on everyone.
The White House insisted Sunday the consequence for Americans not having health insurance is a penalty fee, despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is a tax and said the debate on the Affordable Care Act should finally end.
White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said on Fox News Sunday that “when the Supreme Court rules” the country “has a final decision” and that the presidential campaigns should focus on the economy and jobs.
“What we need to do is go forward with the implementation” of the law, Lew said.WH Chief Of Staff Spends 5 Minutes Struggling To Explain How ObamaCare Isn't A Tax
It's a tax. To see the long list of new taxes that come with ObamaTax, click here.
I would prefer to not have a constitutional precedent that removed all limitations of the federal govt. I won’t celabrate the ability to elect temporary politicians that can temporarily hold off the results of this decision. Eventually we will have different politicians that will use it with tyrranical desires!
We are no longer a free people. Period!
Lew said, “the affordable care act” is constitutional. The supreme court declared it constitutional!.
Chris Wallace called him out and said it was not deemed constitutional, the commerce clause is unconstitutional and made it legal by calling it a tax. Lew would not say the word tax. He kept repeating its constitutional.
Yet it's a tax in that it doesn't impute unlawfulness to your failure to comply with the mandate. By not complying your are just exercising a legitimate option that happens carry with it a required payment, it says.
But the dissenting justices said it doesn't work like that. They pointed to an established legal principle that a penalty doesn't have to explicitly impute unlawfulness in order to be a penalty. Rather it is implicit in the fact that a consequence is being imposed as a result of failing to abide by whatever it is that the law requires.
The question is, what is functionally different between a tax on non-action and a penalty on non-action when the penalty doesn't explicitly impute unlawfulness to the non-action? I don't see that there is a difference. If that's the case then maybe Roberts was justified in merely changing the label: he decided to call it a "six" instead of a "half dozen".
But even though the two may be functionally the same in this instance, changing the label was crucially important because our constitutional system demands that sixes be treated very differently than half dozens. This is because taxes, by their nature, can never impute unlawfulness, whereas penalties can. A tax can never be strengthened into a jail sentence, but a penalty can.
Today Obamacare's penalty is a measly fine that most people can and will readily pay, but tomorrow by the stroke of a Democrat congress's pen it could be jail time. That's what Roberts was worried about.
Still, it's too bad he didn't just join with the other conservative justices and strike the whole jeezly thing down. That would have stopped the threat to liberty posed by the penalty (functioning under the Commerce Clause) without bringing all the unintended consequences that will follow from redefining it as a tax -- the biggie being that we've now formally accepted the premise that massively transforming the healthcare industry is the federal government's proper role.
BTW, sorry everyone for making you scroll past my rambling. I'm trying to think through all this stuff and somehow putting it in writing helps.
If it ain’t a tax how come Obama is hiring all those new IRS agents
When the hell are any of the interviewers going to ask these liars how come they never had those live hearings on CSPAN Mr transparency OBAMA promised but rammed it through in the dark of night
The DAMN STUPID Party should have been all over that as an issue
There is enough video out there
and Obama Kardashian isn’t the President. Just cut them off UNITED STATES. We have enough machines to push DC into the Atlantic.
So, now it is a Penalty. LOL - a Penalty for what, then? It can’t be for not having health insurance, because that would have been the mandate under the Commerce Clause...and the USSC ruled that forcing Americans to buy health insurance is not legal under the Commerce Clause. You can’t have a penalty for something ruled upon as being unconstitutional. So, then, it is a Penalty for not paying a TAX, as the USSC determined the Health Care mandate is!
And good ole Ike was asked by BOTH parties to run.
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Yes, yet my Grandfather, of Irish descent, a man who walked a mail route for 40 some years in Upstate NY, was such an entrenched D that he ‘despised’ Ike because he ran as an R. -
Naturally, at the time I really had no idea why he felt like he did but seeing as Ike was elected in 52, by the time I went in the Navy in 56 and my GF was retiring around 58 or so he may have seen what was up and WE may have ‘suffered’ because Ike ran as an R rather than D -
GF had a ‘problem’ with me going in the Navy because no war was on and that SOB ‘R’ was in office, also refused a retirement certificate signed by DDE.
I couldn’t ‘understand’ that but I would probably be loathe to accept something signed by BO or WJC for that matter.
Sadly, I don’t think Roberts has either the courage or the patriotism necessary to follow that path.
What you said in the first paragraph was good. Is this really possible?
The second paragraph wasn't exactly filled with faith. At least lets try to battle this out in prayer, without being defeated before we even start to pray. We can ask The Father to press Roberts' life into the necessity to do what is right. We can at least ask The LORD and hope He will answer us by pressing Roberts into the right mold. If we don't even try by asking The LORD, with faith, trusting that He will do what is right and best, then we truly are defeated before we even start. We all need to renew our faith in The Living LORD, His sovereignty over all the world and have faith in Him. If we could begin to do this than we are not defeated and cannot lose.
You hit the bull's eye!
I think Romney is a buffoon, but right now he is the only buffoon we have.
Sorry but “no” the Republicans voted overwhelmingly to NOT pass this monstrosity. This was done by the Dems and the Dems alone. To try to say otherwise is nothing but spin.
“I think Romney is a buffoon, but right now he is the only buffoon we have.”
Couldn’t agree more....at least he’s OUR buffoon....can’t get much more American than a Mormon!!!!!!!
Exactly, and bears repeating.
Strange how the journalism majors are forgetting the crucial point of that major SCOTUS decision that they trumpeted just a few days ago.
“Yes, yet my Grandfather, of Irish descent . . .”
Completely understand. I’m Irish, too, and it’s apparently more difficult to break with the Rat party than to break with the Catholic Church (which many have done). If it helps, I don’t think anyone truly understands DDE and his utter lack of Conservative creds until he’s aware of what Ike did to Joe McCarthy.
If you look in his posting history he is saying this over and over. He got into a big argument with me claiming that bills cannot pass out of committee without Republicans having voted for them and therefore they had helped in the background to help bring the bills to the floor. Of course that is not true - it just takes a majority of the overall committee makeup and the Democrats at the time dominated the committees in both houses.
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