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.

"If the Obamacare mandate is a tax, then doesn’t that invalidate the HHS mandate against churches, since they are tax exempt?"

Two different mandates, but your point might hold. The one that was just challenged that SCOTUS ruled on was the mandate that individuals must buy insurance. The HHS mandate against churches is a regulatory rule stating that all health insurances must include abortions.

The problem occurs if you have a penalty (tax?) for not offering insurance. But also if churches desire to offer insurance.

So it is really two issues. Can congress apply a penalty (tax) to a church for failure to offer insurance. And can Congress limit insurance offerings in such a way that there is no insurance alternative available to churches that don't violate their conscience.

I'm not sure I buy that argument. Let me state it another way.

People are given an income tax exemption of $3,800 for each qualifying child.

If I have no children, is that the same thing as being taxed $3,800 for having no children?

-PJ

I'm not sure I buy that argument. Let me state it another way.

People are given an income tax exemption $3,800 for each qualifying child.

If I have no children, is that the same thing as being taxed $3,800 for having no children?

Am I being coerced by the government into having children?

-PJ

"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...a"

But they won't find that out, because I think you are right, it will be repealed before they ever see that tax. Which is kind of a shame, because I suspect that a lot of the people who supported this are exactly the same people that would have gotten taxed.

"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."

I don't follow that. If it costs $12,800 and the fine is $0 today, they have a greater incentive to drop now than before Obamacare.

The only difference is that after Obamacare, companies will know their employees can get group insurance through the government pool. THAT could be the catalyst to causes companies to drop insurance. But the fine actually increases over the next few years, to where it doesn't make sense for companies to drop the insurance at all, because in 4 years the fines will be more than the insurance.

"Am I being coerced by the government into having children? Am I being coerced by the government into having children?"
Yes, It is exactly the same as being taxed $3800 for not having kids.
The difference is that children cost a lot more than $3800. And they aren't nearly as convenient as buying health insurance. They're a little bit messy. Thus the incentive doesn't reach the level of coerced.

The difference between an incentive and coerced is just a matter of degree. If children cost only $2400 a year and were convenient, you'd be able to say the government was coercing you to have children.

Actually people with kids should pay MORE taxes not get a tax break (reduction). After all, they should pay for, first, for the schools they use (privatize education - and have parents, singles & seniors wanting life-long-learning classes, etc all pay for the courses in which they enroll). They (families with kids) also use the roads more (soccer practice, trips to dentist for kids braces), the local parks more, and have more economic value (life & private property) protected by police, fire and national defense.

By cutting taxes for large families, you are subsidizing their greater public goods’ use with the tax receipts of smaller families or of singles.

What we need are user fees for local public services (schools, parks, fire stations) and uniform flat or head taxes for truly “public” nationally provided goods (national defense).

Jess, You have exactly the same point as I have.... Roberts in the inauguration of 2009 had the right/duty to examine the constitutional qualifications of the president elect. If these were lacking, it would be appropriate to not swear him in. But he was a coward. And again he shows his colors in backing down from the challenge — refusing to call the abomination of Obamacare unconstitutional.

Dang... he needs to call up the Supreme’s dressmaker and get a new robe in his favorite color —yellow!

The Administration’s lawyer said in oral argument that they never considered the Constitution when writing 0bama Deathcare.

In effect, neither has the Supreme Court’s majority.

I am done with them. All of them.

As for the DOinJ, may I suggest, “get him, guys?” All of his minions and protectors. ALL OF THEM.

Communism is going to bankrupt us pretty darn quick. Look at Greece. Look at Europe.

The collapse of the US has already begun. Been going on for a few decades.

Watched the collapse of Detroit, while I was living there.

Watched the collapse of California, while I was living there.

There are areas in this country where the police no longer even patrol.

It is collapsing. A slow motion collapse that is accelerating. Best to prepare yourself.

No country last forever. We will have a chance to rebuild some new countries from the ashes of the old.

“It is collapsing. A slow motion collapse that is accelerating. Best to prepare yourself.
No country last forever. We will have a chance to rebuild some new countries from the ashes of the old.”
Maybe too true.
Quote from movie “War Games”!

Stephen Falken: “Now, children, come on over here. I’m going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren’t even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David. “

The Mayans actually celebrate that renewal period. Would not go that far myself. But what significantly changed the US was WWII and the Cold War. We had to enlarge and empower the Federal State to win those wars. Those wars are long gone, but the federal behemoth in DC that was created, is still here. It does not want to die. It is grasping at tyrannical straws as it physically collapses. These are its last days.

"I see your point. But wasn’t the HHS mandate issued as part of Obamacare?"

Yes, but the abortion thing is not codified in the law. Only the HHS department's authority to regulate.

Thus, while their are constitutional challenges to this HHS ruling going on, if successful, they won't invalidate the Obamacare law, only the department's rule.

"If I remember correctly, they passed a shell bill in the senate that originated in the house. Trickery."

That defeats the intent of the constitution and should be unconstitutional.

Maybe someone should sue based on that.

"If I remember correctly, they passed a shell bill in the senate that originated in the house. Trickery."

That defeats the intent of the constitution and should be unconstitutional.

Maybe someone should sue based on that.

The Federal Behemoth you mention is a body of persons elected by us citizens.
They were sworn in to abide by the laws of our Republic, the Constitution, to guide us through perilous times. When they endeavor to destroy this country then it is “We The People” who have to act.
I’m not suggesting criminal action, just excising the cysts that exists in our present government(?). Although I agree with the 2nd Amendment!
I’m in Florida and doing what I can to excise the boil on Florida’s a$$, called Bill Nelson!

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.