Supreme Court and the Individual Mandate

Sloop wrote:

PST wrote:This is getting silly, Sloop. You seem to be under the impression that there were no other tax aspects to the PPACA, and that therefore last Thursday's decision uncovered some constitutional infirmity arising from the requirement that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Nonsense.

You act as if I am the only one in the world who was quite surprised at Roberts finding that the mandate falls under a TAX. We are talking THE MANDATE -- not the rest of the provisions in the law. AND none of the liberals want to put their arms around the mandate now being ruled as a tax.
Get back on subject please.

No, I was surprised by the Roberts opinion too. That was not the subject of our exchange, however. You claimed that the Roberts decision renders the PPACA unconstitutional under the origination clause because it turns it into a revenue bill, and these must originate in the House of Representatives. I said that (1) the PPACA had lots of other revenue sections, so everyone understood from the outset that it had to originate as a House bill, (2) it did originate as a House bill, H.R. 3590, and (3) therefore this is not going to erupt into controversy as a new ground for holding the PPACA to be unconstitutional.

PST wrote:I won't quote your whole message here, just the most relevant part of the Wikipedia article:

Wikipedia wrote:The Senate failed to take up debate on the House bill and instead took up H.R. 3590, a bill regarding housing tax breaks for service members. As the United States Constitution requires all revenue-related bills to originate in the House,[162] the Senate took up this bill since it was first passed by the House as a revenue-related modification to the Internal Revenue Code. The bill was then used as the Senate's vehicle for their health care reform proposal, completely revising the content of the bill.[163] The bill as amended incorporated elements of earlier proposals that had been reported favorably by the Senate Health and Finance committees.

To repeat, this was done openly and with everyone's knowledge two and a half years ago. If anyone seriously thought that this called into question the validity of the act, don't you think some of the many plaintiffs who filed the lawsuits decided last week would have raised it? The issue was laid to rest by the Supreme Court back in 1910 in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. and reinforced by several courts ruling on the validity of the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which was substituted for the entire text of an unrelated House bill by a Republican Senate in 1982 and signed by President Reagan. This is old hat.

That is why you are dead wrong to say:

Sloop wrote:So obviously there is -- at the least - some doubt as to whether the process meets Constitutional muster for PPACA having actually originated in the House. This will be the CENTER of debate in the months to come.

There will be plenty of debate on other points, and this contention may rattle around the right-wing blogosphere for awhile until another shiny object presents itself, but it will not be a subject of actual debate because there is nothing to it.

A couple of points -- like most liberals (and I assume you won't find offense being called one) you have a fixation on aligning me as a brain-dead robot for the right. Where in my responses have I quoted Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or even Fox News? I primarily present sources from Wikipedia, or direct quotes from the principles involved. However, I am a long-time member of The Heritage Foundation, so naturally YES I will use their research too when it is pertinent. You represent the left, in case you didn't know it ---- and we are diametrically opposed. So just accept that, OK? You are not going to change my opinion in the slightest, nor will I change yours. What both of us are about is to hopefully convince others who are 'unsure'.

Secondly -- the part I highlighted in red is the guts of the argument. You hang your hat on "origination", well HR 3590 originally had no resemblance whatsoever to Health Care. And it did NOT get that resemblance until AFTER it came back from the Senate. eos

PST wrote: No, I was surprised by the Roberts opinion too. That was not the subject of our exchange, however. You claimed that the Roberts decision renders the PPACA unconstitutional under the origination clause because it turns it into a revenue bill, and these must originate in the House of Representatives. I said that (1) the PPACA had lots of other revenue sections, so everyone understood from the outset that it had to originate as a House bill, (2) it did originate as a House bill, H.R. 3590, and (3) therefore this is not going to erupt into controversy as a new ground for holding the PPACA to be unconstitutional.

I think the jury is still out on that. What I will give you is this -- to my knowledge, no one yet has begun litigation on this particular aspect. But time will tell.

Sloop wrote:

PST wrote:This is getting silly, Sloop. You seem to be under the impression that there were no other tax aspects to the PPACA, and that therefore last Thursday's decision uncovered some constitutional infirmity arising from the requirement that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Nonsense.

We are talking THE MANDATE -- not the rest of the provisions in the law. …
Get back on subject please.

You COMPLETELY missed PST's point! His explanation and response was squarely ON the subject.

The point he clearly made was that, because there are other provisions in the ACT which always were clearly delineated as tax (revenue) provisions, everyone in the Senate and House, proponent and opponent, knew that the final version had to originate in the House. If you don't understand that, then you are ascribing stupidity to the Republican members for not raising the issue to prevent its passage in the first place. And to all the Republican Attorneys General who sued to block the Act after it was passed for failing to argue that it supposedly originated in the Senate.

If that was a flaw that would have prevented passage, or killed the Act in the AG suits, do you think that they decided to just overlook that "fatal flaw" and said "Oh just let's skip that argument and just wait for the Supreme Court to rule? Republican congressmen and AGs may be many things, but they are not stupid.

Nate

NateS wrote:

Sloop wrote:

PST wrote:This is getting silly, Sloop. You seem to be under the impression that there were no other tax aspects to the PPACA, and that therefore last Thursday's decision uncovered some constitutional infirmity arising from the requirement that revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives. Nonsense.

We are talking THE MANDATE -- not the rest of the provisions in the law. …
Get back on subject please.

You COMPLETELY missed PST's point! His explanation and response was squarely ON the subject.

The point he clearly made was that, because there are other provisions in the ACT which always were clearly delineated as tax (revenue) provisions, everyone in the Senate and House, proponent and opponent, knew that the final version had to originate in the House. If you don't understand that, then you are ascribing stupidity to the Republican members for not raising the issue to prevent its passage in the first place. And to all the Republican Attorneys General who sued to block the Act after it was passed for failing to argue that it supposedly originated in the Senate.

If that was a flaw that would have prevented passage, or killed the Act in the AG suits, do you think that they decided to just overlook that "fatal flaw" and said "Oh just let's skip that argument and just wait for the Supreme Court to rule? Republican congressmen and AGs may be many things, but they are not stupid.

Nate

I feel like I am being pummeled by a tag team.



Do both of you guys work for Pelosi? You seem to keep the same hours.

NateS wrote:You COMPLETELY missed PST's point! His explanation and response was squarely ON the subject.

The point he clearly made was that, because there are other provisions in the ACT which always were clearly delineated as tax (revenue) provisions, everyone in the Senate and House, proponent and opponent, knew that the final version had to originate in the House. If you don't understand that, then you are ascribing stupidity to the Republican members for not raising the issue to prevent its passage in the first place. And to all the Republican Attorneys General who sued to block the Act after it was passed for failing to argue that it supposedly originated in the Senate.

You COMPLETELY miss the source of confusion here.

At first it was a tax, then it was a penalty, now it's a tax, but wait again .. they're saying it's a penalty. Obama stated he would not add another tax to the country because the economy was too fragile to accept it and absolutely no one under $200k a year. Now we know that 75% of all of this tax is going to be shouldered by people making less than $120k a year. They argued it wasn't a tax and instead a penalty before the bill was passed, because they couldn't get it passed if they called it a tax. It went to the Supreme Court, where initially the White House lawyers were arguing that it was a tax, but then in the middle of the arguments, started calling it a penalty. The Supreme Court ruled it was a tax based on those arguments, and they are the SUPREME COURT who's very job it is to interpret the laws of the land and the Constitutionality. They ruled it was EXCLUSIVELY upheld because it was being interpretted as a tax. Now you have the White House trumpetting that the bill was upheld, but insisting that it's not a tax. If the EXCLUSIVE reason for it being upheld is that it was a tax, then by the White House's own admission, does that mean the law must be struck down because it's not a tax? The White House has exceeded a level of sophistry, double talk, Newspeak and outright lies like none before in the history of mankind.

Sloop wrote: I feel like I am being pummeled by a tag team.

You are naively assuming that NateS and I are different people. Isn't it more likely, though, that I am merely a "sock puppet" second identity NateS uses so he can have two bites at the apple in this kind of discussion?

You're all sock puppets!

What I want to know is -- how the heck you manage to type and argue with yourself at the same time? ...

Sloop wrote: I feel like I am being pummeled by a tag team.



Do both of you guys work for Pelosi? You seem to keep the same hours.

LoL!

PST wrote: <snip> more likely, though, that I am merely a "sock puppet" <snip> so he can have two bites at the apple in this kind of discussion?

Now that is just plain silly! Everybody knows that sock puppets can't bite apples! PLEASE!!!!

PST wrote:

Sloop wrote: I feel like I am being pummeled by a tag team.

You are naively assuming that NateS and I are different people. Isn't it more likely, though, that I am merely a "sock puppet" second identity NateS uses so he can have two bites at the apple in this kind of discussion?

If that is the case, you must undergo tremendous mental trauma trying to decide which foot soldier is going to appear.
heh heh heh

Kerr wrote:
You COMPLETELY miss the source of confusion here.

At first it was a tax, then it was a penalty, now it's a tax, but wait again .. they're saying it's a penalty. Obama stated he would not add another tax to the country because the economy was too fragile to accept it and absolutely no one under $200k a year. Now we know that 75% of all of this tax is going to be shouldered by people making less than $120k a year. They argued it wasn't a tax and instead a penalty before the bill was passed, because they couldn't get it passed if they called it a tax. It went to the Supreme Court, where initially the White House lawyers were arguing that it was a tax, but then in the middle of the arguments, started calling it a penalty. The Supreme Court ruled it was a tax based on those arguments, and they are the SUPREME COURT who's very job it is to interpret the laws of the land and the Constitutionality. They ruled it was EXCLUSIVELY upheld because it was being interpretted as a tax. Now you have the White House trumpetting that the bill was upheld, but insisting that it's not a tax. If the EXCLUSIVE reason for it being upheld is that it was a tax, then by the White House's own admission, does that mean the law must be struck down because it's not a tax? The White House has exceeded a level of sophistry, double talk, Newspeak and outright lies like none before in the history of mankind.

Ahh ... a confederate. Thank Heavens, I was thinking I was the Lone Ranger. Excellent summary Kerr. I would only add that, hypothetically, I would love to hear PST and NateS moan about "the right wing court" IF the whole law had been tossed out like 99.999% of the world was expecting because ............ as Roberts wrote "The Framers ... gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it,". And "commerce" was what the Obama administration pretty much built their whole case around. As I understand it, using "tax" as justification was a last minute grab-bag of desperation in their presentation. The fact that Roberts latched onto it, came totally out of left field. I wonder how much mullah was lost in Vegas?

Sloop wrote: Secondly -- the part I highlighted in red is the guts of the argument. You hang your hat on "origination", well HR 3590 originally had no resemblance whatsoever to Health Care. And it did NOT get that resemblance until AFTER it came back from the Senate. eos

Good. We agree on the facts, then. HR 3590 as passed the first time by the House was completely amended in the Senate, substituting all new language after the enacting clause. I'm saying that this has happened before, and the courts have already held that as long as the bill starts in the House, it can have every word replaced in the Senate and still satisfy the origination clause. That may seem to put undue emphasis on form over substance, but it is settled law. The TEFRA example from the prior post is probably the most relevant, because that was also a case of the complete substitution by the Senate of new language for old. However, although several Courts of Appeal came to the same conclusion, it didn't reach the Supreme Court. I will go with the following language from Rainey v. United States, 232 U. S. 310, 317 (1914), which illustrates what commentators call the "enrolled bill rule," the refusal of the Supreme Court to look beyond a bill's official designation as a House or Senate bill to decide origination clause questions:

It appears that the section was proposed by the Senate as an amendment to a bill for raising revenue which originated in the House. That is sufficient. Having become an enrolled and duly authenticated act of Congress, it is not for this Court to determine whether the amendment was or was not outside the purposes of the original bill.

drog wrote:Romney pioneered Obamacare. Socialist medical care may not be the answer but after dealing with numerous DMEs who want to overcharge for junk, neither is a capitalist solution. I think it would help if small companies could legally group together to get insurance rates that compared to the rates large companies get and if health insurers could cross state lines to open up competition.

I've said all along the reform needed was to make a large group of the uninsured, subsidize those who truly need help paying premiums (not those who choose hairdo's and weaves and tattoos over responsible actions). There is now a mandated preexisting plan but it's still a little pricey but not more than I pay for my group plan from my employer who is also my insurer. However, you can come from your doctor's office with a fresh cancer diagnosis and if you've been without insurance for 6 months, you can be covered so long as you acknowledge the condition. Idon't know how long the country can afford to subsidize just this portion thoough. The bills I see are huge and there are small copays and deductibles. Yes they pay premiums but there is no way they come close to paying their way.