I Am Literally Sick Over This Obamacare Travesty

RUSH: Okay, folks. I now know what happened yesterday. I've had time to dig into this. Time that I did not have prior to yesterday's program and did not have during the program. And I can't tell you how sick I am. I am literally sick over what happened yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Literally sick.

Open line Friday. That's the day of the week where you get to choose what it is we talk about when we go to the phones. Monday through Thursday, you have to talk about things I care about, but that's not the case on Friday. So if there's something you think hasn't been said, a question or comment that you'd like to have me answer to, this is your day. Telephone number 1-800-282-2822. Rushnet@LIB.com.

A giant total fraud was perpetrated on this country yesterday. The Supreme Court as an institution is forever tarnished. There are now no limits anywhere on the size, scope, the growth, of government. We were the victims of a purposeful, intentional fraud yesterday. There is no way, were anybody in Washington concerned about the Constitution, there is no way Obamacare gets anywhere close to being law in this country. There is no way it even approaches constitutionality. And the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court knew that. He felt it was his duty, however, to save the legislation.

I don't even care about motivation. I don't care if it's because he wants the New York Times and Washington Post in love with him. I don't care if he wants to be the next John Marshall. I don't care. All I know is that we were defrauded in front of our eyes, wide open. We were taunted, defrauded, mocked, laughed at. I guess 5-4 court decisions are perfectly fine now. Oh yeah, hey, we'll take whatever we can get, we'll take it however we can get it. Even if they have to invent law, even if they have to rewrite a statute that was so poorly written, it wouldn't have gotten past a first grader who understood the Constitution.

Folks, having now learned what happened, and by the way, I can't take much more reading the faint praise for Justice Roberts. There are a lot of conservatives who are trying to find some comfort in all of this by pointing out that justice Roberts ruled that the Commerce Clause isn't a catchall that justifies anything Congress wants to do. "Hey, Rush, we got to look at what we won here." I understand that theory. You do want to try to take the best of things that you can. But this is theft! Theft of liberty and freedom right in front of our eyes. Okay. So the Commerce Clause has been limited, so? Now we get to pay a tax for something we don't do. But it's worse than that. It really is akin to going into a 7-Eleven, and saying to the clerk, "No, I really don't want to buy any gum."

That's what's happened here. I see all these people running around now thinking they've got free health care, and for the next year-and-a-half that's what it's gonna look like. Michelle Obama, "Guess what, contraception is now free." She's got a list of all the things that are free. AP has a list of all the things that are free for everybody. What happened here basically is that Justice Roberts stretched the limits to avoid being accused of activism. He wanted to avoid being accused of activism. Activism, in this case, would have been finding the law as it is unconstitutional. So he succumbed to fear that doing that, upholding the Constitution, would have resulted in him being accused of activism. So what he did, he stretched the limits to avoid being accused of activism, and in the process, he became more activist than any justice in recent memory.

He actually wrote this. It makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. That's all it is here. He's got this law, Congress wants this law, the president wants this law, it's entirely unconstitutional. And they all knew this. Other than the four liberals, they all knew the whole thing was unconstitutional and Justice Roberts decided to rewrite it. He rewrote the legislation in a way that Congress never intended it. It would be like a judge making up for an incompetent lawyer in court and finding somebody who's guilty totally innocent just because the judge wanted to appear magnanimous. Or vice versa. It makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income.

Well, there's a big difference. You don't have to buy gasoline. And for 48% of the country, you don't have to earn an income. But we are all going to have to pay a tax for not doing something. And that starts a limitless universe of activity or lack of activity that can be taxed. There's a doctrine of law that says you don't reach constitutional issues if there is an alternative basis to decide the case. Do you recall we talked yesterday toward the end of the program, and I was admittedly confused because I hadn't had time to read the decision, nor read any analysis of it. Things were happening lickity split here, rat-tat-tat. But something yesterday that had me constantly confused was Justice Ginsburg's dissent. She's in the majority, what was she dissenting against?

Then after the program, I go home and I'm starting to do show prep for today's show, and I find out that a bunch of liberals are ticked off at Roberts, because of what he did with the Commerce Clause. So now I'm really confused. They won and they're complaining about Roberts and Ginsburg wrote a dissent. What was she dissenting from? So I looked into it. They're ticked off at Roberts, essentially she criticizes Roberts for violating the principle that you don't reach constitutional issues if there's an alternative way to decide the case. So Roberts contended that the mandate was unconstitutional, but it could be upheld as a tax. And Ginsburg said, well, if you're going to do that, there's no need to even talk about the mandate and the ruling. If you're going to say that the mandate could be upheld as a tax, then you don't have to even get to the mandate, constitutionally, you don't have to talk about it. You don't have to rule it unconstitutional.

The four libs wanted this case on the mandate, not the tax increase. They wanted the Commerce Clause to be stretched to include unlimited government power. And they were ticked off at Roberts for limiting that. They say if you're going to find this as a tax case, leave it at that. So when I found that out, that really aroused my curiosity, because they thought Roberts then started answering an unnecessary question. And that, according to Ginsburg and the left, makes Roberts an activist judge. You know, my head is swimming, because all of this is gobbledy gook. All of this is total BS, folks. And yes, I'm going to explain this as the program unfolds, I'm just setting the table here.

Roberts did not say this in his opinion, but he knows it. Congress and the president insisted up and down this was not a tax. That the only power that they were relying on here was the Commerce Clause power. That's how the law was presented. That's how it was enacted. That's how it was intended. Obama ran around telling everybody there were no taxes in this, it was not a tax increase. In fact, people's taxes are gonna get cut. The legal controversy was the Commerce Clause. And Justice Roberts thus had to address it, but is an utter travesty. It is an utter travesty that a member of the court, I don't care if it's a chief or whoever decides, that it's up to him to save an unconstitutional piece of legislation under the guise of not being an activist judge.

The Supreme Court wrote legislation, they rewrote this legislation to save it. In the real world, Realville, what used to be, what everybody thought they could count on, what everybody thought and hoped one more time they could depend on, even though we know we really can't, we learned it in Kelo, we learned it in McCain Feingold, we've learned it a lot. We can't count on the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution, and that's why I'm sick. If we can't count on the Constitution being upheld in the Supreme Court, and furthermore, if the Supreme Court is going to take over the duties of the legislative branch and write legislation in order to save incompetent, unconstitutional, faulty work, then we've got pure fraud right before our very eyes.

Byron York went and looked at the first day of oral argument. When you hear this, you are going to be angrier than you even are right now. You're going to relive the first day of oral arguments where they talked about this as a tax. And the court allowed the government to argue both ways, that it was a tax one day, and they allowed the government to argue the next day that it wasn't a tax. First two days of oral arguments are where you find the answer to all the inexplicable questions here.

RUSH: Byron York wrote his piece at the DC Examiner yesterday: "No one knew it at the time, but the key moment in the Supreme Court Obamacare case came on March 26, the first day of oral arguments, when few people were paying close attention. Before getting to the heart of the case, the justices first wanted to deal with what seemed to be a side issue: Was the penalty imposed by the individual mandate in Obamacare a tax?"

"If it was, the case would run afoul of a 19th century-law known as the Anti-Injunction Act, which said a tax cannot be challenged in court until someone has actually been forced to pay it." Well, the Obamacare taxes don't implement until 2014. So on the first day of oral arguments, if Obamacare is a tax, the court would have to throw it out because nobody had paid the tax yet. So the first day of oral arguments, the justices want to know, they asked the government, is this a tax? The government said no. Because everybody wanted the case tried, everybody wanted it adjudicated and they wanted it adjudicated now.

"Since the Obamacare mandate wouldn't go into effect until 2014, that would mean there could be no court case until then." So on the first day of oral arguments, the government said no, it's not a tax. Well, we could stop right there if we wanted to. We could stop after the first 30 minutes of oral argument, back on March 26th, skip everything that happened between then and yesterday, and then go to Justice Roberts' ruling, where he found it to be a tax.

That, of course, is not what happened. They kept arguing. "No one had challenged Obamacare on that basis; the challengers wanted the case to go forward now. The White House, having argued strenuously during the Obamacare debate that the penalty wasn't a tax, wanted to go ahead as well. So the court, on its own, tapped a Washington attorney to make the argument that the penalty was a tax," just to cover their bases. The government wouldn't say it was a tax. The anti-Obama lawyers would not say it was a tax. So the Supreme Court went out and they brought in, they hired their own lawyer to argue that it was a tax. The court on its own tapped a Washington attorney to make the argument the penalty was a tax, and, therefore, the case should not go ahead.

"'The Anti-Injunction Act imposes a "pay first, litigate later" rule that is central to federal tax assessment and collection,' said the lawyer, Robert A. Long, on that first day of oral arguments. 'The Act applies to essentially every tax penalty in the Internal Revenue Code. There is no reason to think that Congress made a special exception for the penalty imposed by [Obamacare].'" So the lawyer hired by the court affirmed it's not a tax. Nobody in the regime thought it was a tax. Nobody in Congress thought it was a tax. And nobody in Congress made a special exception for the penalty imposed by Obamacare as a tax. It was all in the Commerce Clause.

"After Long made his case, it fell to the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, to argue that no, the mandate was not a tax, and therefore the case was not subject to the Anti-Injunction Act." And that's what happened on the first day. The government hired a lawyer to make the case it was a tax; and Verrilli, the Obama lawyer, made the case that it wasn't. This is just so the justices could have arguments on the table that they could then decide.

"At the same time, everyone knew that the next day, when Verrilli planned to argue that the mandate was justified under the Constitution's Commerce Clause, he had as a backup the argument that it was also justified by Congress' power to levy taxes -- in other words, that it was a tax. Justice Samuel Alito saw the conflict right away. 'General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax,' Alito said. 'Tomorrow you are going to be back, and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax. Has the court ever held that something that is a tax for the purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?' 'No,' answered Verrilli. At the time, some observers found the whole thing a little boring; the real action would come the next day, when the court got to the question of whether the Commerce Clause could be stretched to include the individual mandate."

But the first day is where the fraud happened. The first day the government says it isn't a tax. The second day, the government, as a backup, said, "If you don't like the Commerce Clause, we also think it's a tax." The government was allowed to argue this both ways. The first way they were allowed to argue that it wasn't a tax so that the case would go on. The next day they were allowed to argue as a back stop, if the commerce part of it fell apart, that it was a tax. But a lot of these observers who were bored on the first and second days of oral arguments were then shocked yesterday when the chief justice rejected the Commerce Clause argument and ended up "agreeing with Verrilli that the mandate simultaneously was and was not a tax, and that therefore Obamacare would stand. Roberts joined the court's four liberal justices, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, who seemed prepared to uphold Obamacare under any circumstances.

"Roberts' sleight of hand drove his conservative colleagues nuts. 'The government and those who support its position on this point make the remarkable argument that [the mandate] is not a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act, but is a tax for constitutional purposes,' wrote dissenters Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. 'That carries verbal wizardry too far, deep into the forbidden land of the sophists.'"

So from the get-go, this case was allowed to be sloppy, bent, shaped, flaked, and formed, however ultimately the left wanted it to be in order for it to be found constitutional or good. And, by the way, on this Commerce Clause business, folks, they didn't limit anything. They said Obamacare is not permissible under the Commerce Clause. But they didn't limit the Commerce Clause per se here. The anti-injunction act says that you cannot do a court case over a tax until it's been collected, levied and collected. Well, the tax hasn't been levied and collected. And by gosh, if the chief justice himself didn't find that the whole thing is kosher as a tax increase, a tax increase on what we don't buy, and a point that I made yesterday that I want to make again, when you pay taxes, where do you pay the money? Government gets the money. These taxes are gonna be paid to insurance companies. Is that even a tax?

You have to buy health insurance. If you don't, there's a fine. So the money that you're spending that you otherwise wouldn't, the tax, being spent with insurance companies. The tax anti-injunction act was codified title 26 US code. It was enacted in 1867. It is the law. It's never been found to be unconstitutional. The Obama administration was allowed to argue it both ways. So that however it ended up being most beneficial to them was the way the court was going to decide.

So we, who cannot be protected from the political choices we make, spend all this time debating and arguing against a piece of legislation based on the Commerce Clause. The court admits they can't find it constitutional, so guess what? We're gonna make this thing legal by calling it a tax increase. Government can do that. There's a reason nobody predicted this outcome. And the reason is nobody was thinking outside the boundaries of the law.

RUSH: My friend, Andy McCarthy, has a piece on this at PJMedia.com. His headline is: "Obamacare Ruling: Pure Fraud and No Due Process." Here's how he opens: "Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court decided that Americans have no right to due process. Indeed, the court not only upheld a fraud perpetrated on the public -- it became a willing participant." That's exactly right! This whole law has been presented fraudulently. The whole thing was a fraud.

They tried all kinds of things that ultimately didn't work because the people weren't gonna put up with it. It was upheld by the Supreme Court through trickery. "Had Obamacare..." This is Andy writing. "Had Obamacare been honestly presented as a tax, or had the court acted properly by striking it down as an illegitimate use of the commerce power and telling Congress that if it wanted to pass the bill as a tax it would have to pass the bill as a tax, our dire financial straits might have forced this much-needed debate about the limits of congressional welfare power.

"We have now lost that opportunity through fraud: Fraud in the legislative action, and fraud in the judicial review. Due process would not allow this to be done to a criminal, but the Supreme Court has decided that Americans will have to live with it." The administration presents a case to the Supreme Court that is based entirely on an individual mandate that is said to be legal because of the Commerce Cause. If Congress had wanted to pass a bill that got the same thing done with taxes, it would have done that.

Obama was out promising tax cuts to everybody. He promised lower premiums, greater health care coverage and treatment. There was no way that they wanted to talk about this as a tax, a tax increase, or anything of the sort. So the court should have adjudicated this on the basis of what was in the bill -- period -- and they didn't. Again, the chief justice wrote what I'm gonna read to you here: "Under my theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income."

That's the stretch that he had to make in order to get to where he ended up. "Under my theory, the mandate's not a legal command to buy insurance." It most certainly the hell was! And that's all it was. And that's not constitutional. It was a "command" by the federal government that we buy something. They don't have that power! The chief said, "Eh, it's not a legal command. It just makes going without insurance another thing the government taxes, which the government can do, like buying gasoline or earning income."

RUSH: Roberts says that he thougt it was his duty to save the Act no matter what. It was his duty to save the Act no matter how bad it was. He had to write it to make it legal. Sorry. I feel like the police chief in my town just had a press conference and has announced that the police force will now be assisting criminals in breaking into my property. That is how I feel.

Roberts might just end up looking like the smartest one of the bunch by the time all of this is over. And now it’s in our hands. If we want Obamacare to disappear, we need to get him out of the White House and get control of the Senate. That done, Obamacare is as good as dead and the Dems can’t do anything about the things they gave away to Roberts for his vote.

Pardon my French but CK is FOS. I listened to Mark Levin yesterday. He carefully went through the ruling and its implications.

Mark is a brilliant Constitution scholar. Mark said that the damage done by Roberts will take decades to reverse. Mark stated there is no silver-lining.

Roberts was not trying to do good and be crafty. No. Roberts was willingly and knowingly helping increase State Power. Roberts is an evil man. May he live the rest of his disgusting life regretting his decision.

I wish him a miserable life for the misery he will help unleash across our Republic.

I don’t know if they have the guts or not, time will tell.

All I know is this site is filled with the biggest bunch of hand wringing crybabies I have yet to see on a political forum. It’s all gloom and doom as if the medias report of an Obama victory is anything but bullshit hype for the moonbat base.

Someone care to explain to me how this is a “win” for Ostupid? If I do something which is not wanted by 60% of those responsible for me keeping my job and it is instead approved and allowed to stand by those who have nothing to do with me keeping my job how do I win anything? In the sense his (unpopular) law was upheld it is a victory for him in the short term, I guess but it is also a classic case of winning the battle and losing the war.

It’s up to Romney and Rep to get out the message far and wide as to the cost to the average citizen over the next 2-3 years and if they can do that they can win and if they win I see no reason why Romney cannot give out waivers as easily as Obama did. In this case Romney said he would issue waivers to everyone in America. If we take the Senate and WH my understanding is it will only take a simple majority in each House to unwind the funding mechanism. No money no law.

But as you said, if we haven’t the guts then we deserve what we get.

It’s not ObamaCare, it’s how the taxing power has been expanded.

Don’t maintain your weight or exercise? Pay a tax.

Don’t want to take certain courses in college? Pay a tax.

Don’t want to have just one child and help “save the planet”? Pay a tax.

Don’t want to (fill-in-the-blank). Pay a tax.

Don’t want to live your life the way the government wants you to? Pay a tax.

The federal government now has the authority to use its taxing power to coerce its citizens to live their lives according to the government’s vision.

I would have rather had it justified under the commerce clause than this expansion of the taxing power. This is dangerous—not many people have realized just how dangerous.

Their goal is to make us slaves and tax us for any godless, crazy, evil thing they want to push on us if we don’t agree with it. The ultimate Dhimmi tax except it’s for liberal evil causes.

We just watched The Patriot last night. July 4th and the Declaration will have special meaning for us this year. If they cancel or rig the election...

On the mandate I'm having a hard time drawing the line between the mandate and other tax incentives. It feels like it's crossed a line. But exactly what line?

What's the difference between this and say a tax credit for energy efficient home improvement?

Isn't a tax for failing to engage in commerce, exactly the same as a tax credit for engaging in commerce? The only difference being terminology and the alleged nominal tax rate?

Example: Lets say I make $10,000 and my tax rate is 20% so I pay $2,000. But there is a tax credit if I buy energy efficient windows of $400. So if I buy the windows I pay $1600 in taxes, and if I don't I pay $2000 in taxes.

Now reverse that and say there is a penalty for failing to buy energy efficient windows of $400. Let's also lower the nominal tax rate to 16% to more easily see they are the same. If I don't buy the windows I pay $1600+$400 penalty = $2000. And if I do buy the windows I only pay $1600.

So effectively a penalty for not engaging in commerce is exactly the same as a tax credit for engaging in commerce.

There are minor differences.

If you aren't going to adjust the nominal tax rate, you'd much rather have a tax credit than a tax penalty. Because the penalty represents a tax increase to the nominal rate, whereas a tax credit is a decrease to the nominal rate.
This is affecting everybody except those who have little or no income, whereas most tax credits are more limited in scope. But think of child tax credits, they are pretty wide spread. Nobody gets upset about those.
Congress sold this as a penalty not as a tax increase.

I think the real issues are:

There are things in Obamacare that are constitutional, but that we don't like, so we were hoping the mandate would save us.
Congress had to literally threaten and bribe their own members to do this to us. So it's not your typical legislation drawn up by a representative congress.
Congress wasn't even allowed to read it before passing it, a breach of trust that automatically should and does cast suspicion both on the legislation and those that voted for it.

Roberts kicked this back to the voters and said "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

It is in fact, their role to protect us from the consequences of our political choices if those choices choose to exceed the constitutional limits. It's why there were checks and balances. It's why a court exists.
Roberts could have protected us from this legislation by simply relying on the clear assertion that this was not a tax.
On the other hand, had he treated it consistently as a tax, we would have had to wait until 2014, for the court to rule.

Which brings up another point. Laws like the one that says the court can't consider the constitutionality of a tax until its paid, ought themselves to be unconsitutional.

Clearly people suffer harm from such impending taxes. They ought to have standing.

"Roberts slammed the door shut on coercive use of the Commerce Clause (whicn could be defended with a Senate filibuster) and forced that ObamaCare and all similar tactics rely on tax law. This is significant because repeal of taxes can *never* be filibustered. When repeal passes the House on the 11th, there *will* be an up-or-down vote in the Senate—it *cannot* be filibustered. So in that sense, Roberts was right—every time the Dems try something underhanded like this, we’ll now always have a fair chance to take it out on their hides—they won’t be able to rely on Senators from a few blue states. They wanted to be able to have NY, NJ, CA, et. al. be able to thwart the will of everyone else, but now that avenue is closed to them."

The U.S. House of representatives will introduce a bill to repeal ObamaCare on July 11th, which will likely pass.

Then the ObamaCare Repeal Bill be be brought over to the U.S. Senate, where it must be voted up or down in public for all to see.

If U.S. Senators vote for it's passage, they will be handing their opponents an election year gift issue and a sledge hammer for their opponents to beat themselves over the head with.

That about says it all and I think it’s high time people read the Decleration of independence again this July 4th, especially the second paragraph “whenever any government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it” which just may take a civil war to do. This government is no longer on the road to tyranny, tyranny is HERE!

I'm so surprised that others never saw this on election night. I knew it was over then. Not that I'm happy but nothing has or will shock me of what this banana republic will do. The only avenue left is a second civil war & the lazy, give me, sheeple won't fight. We are totally screwed.

"your math only works if you lower the nominal rate as you did in your 2nd example."

True it's a tax increase. But had congress raised rates and then offered a tax credit, would we still have claimed the mandate was unconstitutional?

The really dangerous part of this is the precedent it sets. We can now be taxed for doing nothing. The communists will find all sorts of nefarious applications for that.

But it's strictly a precedent of perception. We already were being taxed for doing nothing, every time there is a tax credit that we didn't take advantage of.

This one is more severe since in a few years the tax is supposed to be more than the cost of the insurance. In that regard it's different.

I guess I was looking for a legal reason why the mandate should be unconstitutional. So far, all I've got is that congress labeled it a penalty and that healthcare isn't an enumerated power.

Roberts limited the commerce clause, but Romneycare which is identical would have sailed past that concern, because Romney labeled his as tax credits from the start. Thus, the supposed limit on the commerce clause is not really a limit. Since all they have to do is structure an tax credit and adjust rates to accomplish exactly the same thing.

The states won their Supreme Court case. They do not have to abide by the law and add 50 million new people into their healthcare system, which would easily bankrupt a fair amount of them; nor can they be punished and lose their current gov Medicare funds, which Obamacare tried to steal from them via blackball extortion. So the 28 states that sued won, are already announcing no thanks, we can’t afford your bill and are not participating. Real soon, tens of millions of Obama voters in those states (half the country) will find out their “victory” is they have not obtained free healthcare, nor free insurance. All that has happened is they have been taxed by Obama...and if they don’t pay up their IRS refunds will be seized.

The individual mandate was tossed. If upheld and the bill allowed to stand, it would have been impossible to rescind. Obamacare passed using reconciliation. Now declared a tax, it only takes 51 votes using reconciliation to abolish the whole bill. Seeing as this single issue is what catapulted rep voters to the 2010 voting booth, (giving the dems the largest mid-term landslide in 78 years), this decision, combined with a lousy economy guarantees a blowout rep victory. Upon winning a rep majority senate, the bill will be repealed with 51+ votes early next year. All attempts to write a new one will be filibustered by dems. In the end, nothing changed other than a huge power shift in Washington, and the states will not go bankrupt via ballooning healthcare costs.

The losers? Tens of millions of working families will now lose their company healthcare. Avg healthcare cost is $12,800 per employee to companies. The Obamacare fine is $2,000 if you do not provide healthcare to employees. Countless companies in bad financial situations will use this opportunity to drop healthcare...for tens of millions of employees and their families. And for those families it will cost them far more the replace, without the company group rate. To these unfortunate Obamacare victims, they just had their take home pay cut by 25-35%, putting many in dire financial straits. In a short six months, people will realize the net result of this decision is fewer people now have healthcare, and Obama voters got taxed for nothing.

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