Posted on 12/11/2013 10:10:19 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Why is this man smirking?
OK, not really praise; Roberts’s failure to strangle the Obamacare baby in its crib when he had the chance will go down alongside the Dred Scott decision as one of the greatest moral disasters in the history of the republic. The man in charge of enforcing the Constitution blinked when confronted with a triumphalist party and a then-popular president, forgetting that he, Roberts, would likely be in Washington long after Obama was gone. In an attempt to save the Supreme Court’s reputation and standing, he destroyed it.
Still, even if inadvertently, Roberts got one thing right: the Patient Deflection and Unaffordable Care Act is a tax, and nothing but a tax. A punitive, regressive tax, to be sure — but a tax nonetheless. A tax on ideological stupidity, as its supporters are just now learning. Just wait til the “employer mandate” kicks in.
Remember that the PDUCA has nothing whatsoever to do with “health care.” That was just the heartstring-tugging pretense to mask a breathtaking power grab by the Democrats. No one’s health will be improved by the passage of this law, although many may well be adversely affected. Nor it is even really about “insurance.” For how can we call covering pre-existing conditions “insurance”? You can only insure against something in the future, not something that’s already occurred. Call it a socialized risk pool, or some such, but don’t call it “insurance.”
No, what Obamacare is — and was always meant to be — is an onerous tax on the middle class, wearing the usual Leftist disguise of “compassion.” With soaring deductibles and higher premiums for all, but “subsidies” for some, it’s a huge transfer of wealth from those who can least afford it, prostituting the insurance companies (through which the monies will flow) in the service of a governmental enterprise both unasked for and constitutionally uncalled for.
In effect, what Obamacare does is destroy the concept of insurance completely: if your deductible soars to $6,250 (the “bronze” plan) — meaning the amount you will have to pay out of your own pocket — then you might as well not have “insurance” at all, and simply pay a fee for service, at much lower rates. Meanwhile, your “premiums” become an entirely new, unplanned-for expense that will net you… nothing you didn’t already have before. Far better to simply buy catastrophic insurance and otherwise pay as you go.
What big teeth you have, Grandma
But that would defeat the whole point of Obama’s enterprise. As I wrote over at NRO’s The Corner in March 2012:
Does anyone — on either side — really think that the Patient Deflection and Unaffordable Care Act is about health care?
For if it’s about “health care,” aren’t there a myriad of ways in which the system could be improved without a “comprehensive” top-down solution? At a time of extreme economic dislocation, was there a nationwide clamor to make “health care” the top priority of the new administration?
Or is it really about the exercise of raw governmental power, to teach the citizenry an object lesson about the coming brave new world, one that surely will get even worse once Obama is safely past the shoals of his last election?
To believe in the “good intentions” of the former — as soft-headed conservatives are sometimes wont to do when crediting the hard Left with anything but sheer malevolence toward the country as founded — is to have to pretzel one’s mind around the internal contradictions of the bill itself (it’s a tax! It’s not a tax!) and the way in which it was imposed just a couple of years ago by a one-party Congress that no longer exists, having been rebuked and sent packing by an outraged electorate.
Far easier to believe in the latter — that Obamacare is just the canary in the coal mine of what’s coming next. That, once having established the hammer, the administration will use Obamacare (should the law be found constitutional) as the anvil upon which to smash the Republic once and for all. And the “progressives’s” Long March through the institutions will finally end in the all-powerful centralized government for which they’ve long yearned.
Sure, it’s fun to watch Obamacare implode — but it helps to remember that its very impracticality is a feature, not a bug. For the cure for “Reform” is always more “Reform,” not less. This isn’t the end. It’s only the beginning. Maybe the next time the Roberts Court has a chance to put this thing out of its misery, it’ll take it.
The nice thing about it being a tax is that pre-empts the Dems moral argument that not signing uup for Obamacare is not complying with the law.
Not paying ‘the tax’ is not complying, but there is no penalty for that.
How has it survived this long when we should have “equal protection” under the law. It boggles my mind the mental gymnastics that had to be used to get around that.
Perhaps read the article….
You think the Dems care about "moral arguments"?
I agree. It would have been a radical reversal of precedent to say this tax was somehow unconstitutional, when we already have so many endless gimmicks in place with the tax code (buy energy-saving cars, get a tax credit, etc.). I would love for nobody to be able to get tax refunds for taxes they haven’t paid, but they do. If the courts were going to judge what is and isn’t a proper tax (or tax refund) it should’ve happened decades ago. There are plenty of stupid laws but it’s not the job of the courts to clean up the messes made by the legislature. The legislature is constitutionally permitted to write stupid laws.
I don’t however understand how the Medicaid expansion was thrown out but the rest of the law was allowed to stand, due to the lack of a severability clause.
Obamacare is still in the courts on several other issues, like the religious liberty issue, so the Supreme Court by no means declared it constitutional on the whole, only on the issues they heard so far. But because of the Medicaid decision, they seem to have precluded the idea that they’ll ever throw out the entire law on any basis, and instead only pick and choose what they like.
I fail to buy Obamacare. I am fined.
And if you fail to go to college you pay more in taxes because you won't get tax credits that others. Is that a fine?
The government could reduce everyone's taxes by the amount of the education credits, then add a penalty back for not getting an education. Mathematically there's no difference between that and what we do now.
What about fining an entire state for not participating in the old 55 mph speed limit program? The federal government laid a tax on gas for the interstate system, then refused to give it back in road spending if states didn't impose the 55mph limit.
The infamy of what Roberts did to us all will live for centuries.
Let me try again slooooly.
Dems moral argument to those others they want to comply.
Not a moral argument to Dems.
Shakespeare often has his characters say things that he does not necessarily believe himself. He was a Christian (I believe they’re still arguing over whether he was a Catholic), so he surely didn’t believe “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” which directly contradicts Matthew. And it can be argued that Christianity posits the very opposite of this remark that the good dies and the evil lives on.
Probably because the income tax is segmented. Everyone pays the same tax on their first $50,000 or whatever. It’s only the higher bracket of income subject to the higher tax. So no one is charged a different tax on the same portion of income.
If they said all your income is taxed at a higher rate if the total exceeds a certain limit, then you’d have a better equal protection argument. That’s when you’re singling out an individual for different treatment, not singling out the income itself for a different tax.
My fear is that these taxes can trump the bill of rights.
Tax everyone with a gun. Tax everyone that says things the state doesn't like. Tax those with the "wrong" religion. Etc, etc.
There was a time when taxes paid for only government services used. With the income tax amendment, there are now no limits.
A penalty is NOT a tax. Period.
Our Article V Convention ought to take teh opportunity to define the Federal taxing power.
And I think Roberts knows this now, which is why I think he'll over turn it at any opportunity…..
I still want to know what they had on him. Must be somewhat serious or he wouldn’t have caved.
Spot on, the man is at best a coward, pulling back from a situation that could have given him a great spot in history as a good guy.
This article is full of it.
Is this the largest Tax hike in history? And the most destructive?
Why do you think this? I see no evidence that the man won’t stay compromised, either by his own mental processes, or whatever else caused him to change his mind the last weeks before the decision. This was not the only decision he screwed the pooch on.
Me thinks someone had photos of Mr. Roberts eating a wiener.
you could characterize any tax that way. Income tax is a "fine" for earning a certain amount of money. Sales tax is a punishment for buying certain stuff. It's all a tax.
People thought Justice Roberts was cleaver when he declared the noncompliance fines imposed by the ACA were instead a tax. Please correct me if I’m wrong but since any tax levied on the people, according to our constitution, can only come from the House, there was hope that the House would force compliance of that rule, thus killing the ACA. Obviously that was wishful thinking. The real reason Roberts declared the ACA fine as a Tax, other than that was what he told to do, is because an individual can challenge an imposed fine in court and a fine for not purchasing health insurance would, for all intents, have been found unconstitutional in a lower court. The legality of a Federal Tax once it becomes law can not be challenged. With that, Justice Roberts is as wretched and treasonous as the other anti-constitutionalist justices as well as the establishment cabal now running DC.
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