Replies

Hours after the decision was announced, Romney stated he agreed with the minority opinion in the case, signed by Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Kennedy.

Almost every conservative in the country also claims to agree with that dissenting opinion.

The minority opinion clearly states that the conservative justices do not agree that the penalty is a tax. Here is the relevant section:

Against the mountain of evidence that the minimum coverage requirement is what the statute calls it—a requirement—and that the penalty for its violation is what the statute calls it—a penalty—the Government brings forward the flimsiest of indications to the contrary. It notes that “[t]he minimum coverage provision amends theInternal Revenue Code to provide that a non-exempted individual . . . will owe a monetary penalty, in addition to the income tax itself,” and that “[t]he [Internal RevenueService (IRS)] will assess and collect the penalty in the same manner as assessable penalties under the Internal Revenue Code.” The manner of collection could perhaps suggest a tax if IRS penalty-collection were unheard-of or rare. It is not.

The last of the feeble arguments in favor of petitioners that we will address is the contention that what this statute repeatedly calls a penalty is in fact a tax because it contains no scienter requirement. The presence of such a requirement suggests a penalty—though one can imagine a tax imposed only on willful action; but the absence of such a requirement does not suggest a tax. Penalties for absolute-liability offenses are commonplace. And where a statute is silent as to scienter, we traditionally presume a mens rea requirement if the statute imposes a “severe penalty.” Staples v. United States, 511 U. S. 600, 618 (1994). Since we have an entire jurisprudence addressing when it is that a scienter requirement should be inferred from a penalty, it is quite illogical to suggest that a penalty is not a penalty for want of an express scienter requirement.

And the nail in the coffin is that the mandate and penalty are located in Title I of the Act, its operative core, rather than where a tax would be found—in Title IX, containing the Act’s “Revenue Provisions.” In sum, “the terms of [the] act rende[r] it unavoidable,” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 448 (1830), that Congress imposed a regulatory penalty, not a tax.

For all these reasons, to say that the Individual Mandate merely imposes a tax is not to interpret the statute but to rewrite it. Judicial tax-writing is particularly troubling. Taxes have never been popular, see, e.g., Stamp Actof 1765, and in part for that reason, the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives.

Obama wants to claim he agrees with the decision that declared it constitutional because it is a tax, while simultaneously insisting it is not a tax.

You can't simultaneously hold the position that the decision was both right and wrong on whether the penalty is a tax. Obama is trying to get away with that logical absurdity. Romney is not.

When Romneycare was passed, we didn't have a big issue here in "Taxachusetts" over whether it was a "penalty" or a "tax." We just assumed it would be a tax and it was called a "tax penalty." LOL

By the way, the reason why Romney is justified in saying that the difference between Romneycare and Obamatax is that Romneycare was specifically for the STATE of Massachusetts, and not for the nation as a whole ( Gov. Scott of Wisconsin said Massachusetts Romneycare wouldn't work for Wisconsin ), is because Romneycare was signed into law by Mitt Romney with a view to solving a problem relatively unique to our state - namely, the excessively large number of uninsured recipients of health care services who were all too frequently using the hospital emergency rooms for their primary care. People need to be reminded that for a while, welfare here in Massachusetts was out of control.

Massachusetts hospitals were heading towards bankruptcy.

But even more importantly, owing to the rules of Medicaid funding, the Federal Government had threatened to cut $385 million in those payments to Massachusetts if the state did not reduce the number of uninsured recipients of health care services.

Ergo, the signing into law of "Romneycare."

People also need to be reminded that it was Obama's lawyers who argued that Obamacare was a tax before the Supreme Court because it would have been unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.

The reason Obama and his confreres refused to call it a tax when they were trying to sell it to the American people is because they believed it never would have passed if sold as a "tax."

And who can forget that newsclip of Obama just about swearing the print out of the Bible to George Stephanopoulos that Obamacare was ,NOT a tax?

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/obama-in-2009-its-not-a-tax/