Indian reservation locations.
Posted on 03/24/2010 8:32:12 PM PDT by Hostage
The top prosecutors in Washington and 12 other states filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the landmark health-care legislation minutes after President Obama signed it into law.
In a suit filed in federal court in Tallahassee, Fla., the attorneys general claimed the requirement for all Americans to buy health insurance is unconstitutional — the equivalent of going a step beyond simply regulating automobiles to requiring people to buy a car.
"This bipartisan effort by attorneys general around the country should put the federal government on notice that we will not tolerate the constitutional rights of our citizens and the sovereignty of our states to be trampled on," Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said. "I will pursue this litigation to the highest court, if necessary."
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.nwsource.com ...
Given the financial hardships it will put on individual states (except MA, where we put health care hardships on ourselves!), isn’t it sort of the ultimate unfunded mandate?
That is one argument states are using. I think it is a powerful one but don’t know all the details and finer points to say why it is powerful.
A tax on breathing.
Seems like homeless people are now going to be required to have health insurance under penalty of law.
But Dear Reader said it is NOT a tax...
In September, Obama got into a semantic argument with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who noted that requiring all Americans to pay premiums for a government-guaranteed service sounds an awful lot like a tax.
“No. That’s not true, George,” Obama said. “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase.
Stephanopoulos invoked a dictionary definition of a tax: “a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.” Obama laughed off the idea that a dictionary might outrank him as the final arbiter of a word’s meaning: “George, the fact that you looked up . . . the definition of tax increase indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition.”
I think Obama knows the history quite well that Rush spoke about today, how FDR lied that Social Security was not a tax but was an insurance fund and then sent his lawyers into court to argue it was a tax.
I think Obama knows and has known this since before he was elected.
Thanks for posting that. I was going to ping you here. This article calls out what Rush Limbaugh spoke of today, that Obama’s lawyers are going to argue it is a tax (See post #2).
The history as Rush summarized is that FDR lied that Social Security was not a tax, that it was a retirement insurance plan, but then sent his lawyers into court to argue it was tax.
That concerns me. Someone has to draw a line in the sand.
But Social Security was different in the sense that it was “small” only 1% total (employee and employer).
“But Social Security was different in the sense that it was “small” only 1% total (employee and employer).”
I was thinking along those lines today after reading that an average family making over $88,000 could spend a quarter of their income on premiums.
That is VERY EXTREME to mandate a family to fork over a quarter of their cash, else be treated as criminals.
I was thinking on the drive home......... aren’t Indian reservations subject to much less law as they aren’t part of the nation?
Some pretty big tracts.... you could set up some non-0 healthcare there. Insurance, too.
No, they won’t argue it is a tax since they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. All revenue raising measure must originate in the House. Because the House signed onto the Senate Bill, THIS PLOY WOULD BACKFIRE AND THE WHOLE LEGISLATION COULD BE DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
RATHER, THEY WILL ARGUE, AS DOES PROF. TUSHNET, THAT THIS LEGISLATION IS PERMITTED UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OR THE NECESSARY AND PROPER CLAUSE.
It’s an excellent idea but let’s hope this law gets knocked out in court.
But it’s sad to contemplate that Americans are going to have to retreat into the Indian reservations in order to escape the overreaching hand of federal government.
It’d be nice if healthcare could drive out the gambling casinos, which the Indians really don’t need. It perpetuates their decline.
I hope you are right.
Do you think the AGs are aware of what you just posted?
Do you think the dems made this error of such magnitude that it could sink it from a tax perspective?
Are you sure that by passing the Senate Bill, the House didn’t adopt it as their own?
Have to get at details here.
I don’t see how it can be claimed to be an income tax. If one has no income one year and chooses not to purchase they still have to pay an “income tax”? Not.
The Ocare legislation calls for a lot of new bureaus to outreach to the Indians. Aren’t those going to be located on Indian lands?
I don’t know how it’s going to treat the deeply indigent. They may get a pass and get Ocare free. The hullabaloo from the liberals would be deafening if that weren’t the case.
This is actually one reason I am optimistic. I think this entire health care controversy could end up reversing bad precedence imposed by the Supreme Court. The interstate commerce precedence that is currently on the books is outrageous. It is not too hard to understand that Supreme Court Justices during the Great Depression would have had a lot of pressure to go along with the New Deal, but now the court has the opportunity to reverse their mistake.
Just occurred to me, THIS is the reason why they talk about fees rather than taxes in the stupid legislation.
Indian reservation locations.
The Harvard professor is trying to confuse issues, namely consumption of health care with the choice not to consume health insurance. This distinction between consumption and a choice not to consume is one that has not been dealt with in any manner (that I can think of) by the Supreme Court. The Harvard professor would like us to believe that what the legislation really is doing is regulating the actual HEALTH CARE as opposed to regulating the DECISION whether to purchase insurance.
Up until this point, the outer edge of the commerce clause was defined by either Wickard v. Filburn or Raich v. Gonzales. These cases involved an individual growing something for their personal consumption - in Wickard it was wheat and in Raich it was weed. In both cases, the actions of the grower was restricted by federal law claiming authority under the commerce clause of the constitution. In both cases, the Supreme Court found that these acts of individual production were interstate commerce that could be reached by power granted under the commerce clause as such actions, if taken by a large number of growers, would have an impact on the actual amount of goods transported between the states.
Both of these cases are generally viewed as defining the outer limit of the power of the commerce clause.
In all fairness to the opposition, Wickard could pose problems for our side as there are some very unfortunate statements in it, such as:
“[E]ven if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce, and this irrespective of whether such effect is what might at some earlier time have been defined as `direct’ or `indirect.’”
However, even with this unfortunate statement, the facts of Wickard and Raich are still significantly different from that of the present case in that they were regulating positive participation in commerce as opposed to the decision as to not participate. In many ways, the facts of this case are closer to those of United States v. Lopez which dealt with a gun ban in school zones and forbade the mere possession of a firearm within these zones.
Noting that mere possession is not commerce and that such an interpretation would destroy the federal system established in the constitution, the Supreme Court struck down the law. The current situation is similar to that of Lopez in that the arguments for the nexus to interstate commerce both involve potential costs placed upon society by a failure to regulate - in Lopez, the social cost of violence in schools and the resulting lack of learning, and currently the cost of having un- and under-insured individuals who don’t receive treatment. Also, similar to Lopez, the extension of power to the federal government to regulate the decision to consume would upset the balance of power created in the constitution as this would allow the federal government to regulate any decision.
Maybe more importantly, the constitution, according to our liberal friends, protects some central fundamental liberties, among which is our ability to choose. Regardless of the economic impact of a decision, the commerce clause cannot grant the government a power to limit our other freedoms.
As is always the case, the law can go either way. However, sanity screams that allowing the government to regulate a decision not to participate in commerce must be beyond the realm of the commerce clause. If it is not, the government can compel us to by GM cars, to purchase abortions for ourselves, to purchase clean needles in case we develop a heroin habit, and anything else that they decide we need. If the government can do this, the constitution has been destroyed and we no longer have a limited government. In light of this, I cannot imagine any rational justice (meaning Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito - and maybe even Stevens on a good day) thinking that such a mandate is authorized by the commerce clause.
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