Supreme Court and the Individual Mandate

[Ticman]

So to simplify this. Obama lied and you're okay with it. Is that about right?

And Obama lied how, exactly?

One Justice, over whom he, i.e., the President, has no control decided to say that the mandate was kind of sort of like a tax and that makes Obama a liar? No, I don't think so. But if you feel like that vindicates your view of the President, so be it.

It's either a tax or it's DOA. Can't have it both ways. Did you read the ruling?

[Slinky]

Welllllll ...... let's see ...... Bush Daddy said "Read my lips ... " Tit for tat, eh?

[mikewithe]

So to simplify this. Obama lied and you're okay with it. Is that about right?

And Obama lied how, exactly?

One Justice, over whom he, i.e., the President, has no control decided to say that the mandate was kind of sort of like a tax and that makes Obama a liar? No, I don't think so. But if you feel like that vindicates your view of the President, so be it.

It's either a tax or it's DOA. Can't have it both ways. Did you read the ruling?

I did read the ruling all 100+ pages including syllabus and dissents. Now I don't claim to be a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I did take several constitutional law classes in college (double major in Public Affairs and Criminology) and I think I have a good grasp of the ruling. But what I fail to grasp is how you can say that Obama lied because SOMEONE ELSE over whom he has NO CONTROL decided that the mandate was sort of like a tax. Further, to say that he lied would imply that he knew that it was tax and deliberately misled people and tried to sneak it in under the commerce clause. I don't believe that to be true. So, unless Obama says, "Yep, its a tax." Then he hasn't lied.

[Kerr]

I did read the ruling all 100+ pages including syllabus and dissents. Now I don't claim to be a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I did take several constitutional law classes in college (double major in Public Affairs and Criminology) and I think I have a good grasp of the ruling. But what I fail to grasp is how you can say that Obama lied because SOMEONE ELSE over whom he has NO CONTROL decided that the mandate was sort of a like a tax. Further, to say that he lied would imply that he knew that it was tax and deliberately misled people and tried to sneak it in under the commerce clause. I don't believe that to be true. So, unless Obama says, "Yep, its a tax." Then he hasn't lied.

The Supreme Court upheld it only because they deemed it was a tax. If Obama says it isn't a tax, then it isn't Constitutional.

Either way, anyone who doesn't think this is going to do significant damage to our economy and our healthcare system is just a naive moron. What Obama has done here has been done elsewhere and it's failing miserably. There are riots in the streets due to countries going bankrupt, and it will all occur here if this monstrosity is allowed to continue. Stock up on food, water, and weapons to protect your own.

Good luck everyone.

[mikewithe]

I did read the ruling all 100+ pages including syllabus and dissents. Now I don't claim to be a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I did take several constitutional law classes in college (double major in Public Affairs and Criminology) and I think I have a good grasp of the ruling. But what I fail to grasp is how you can say that Obama lied because SOMEONE ELSE over whom he has NO CONTROL decided that the mandate was sort of a like a tax. Further, to say that he lied would imply that he knew that it was tax and deliberately misled people and tried to sneak it in under the commerce clause. I don't believe that to be true. So, unless Obama says, "Yep, its a tax." Then he hasn't lied.

The Supreme Court upheld it only because they deemed it was a tax. If Obama says it isn't a tax, then it isn't Constitutional.

Either way, anyone who doesn't think this is going to do significant damage to our economy and our healthcare system is just a naive moron. What Obama has done here has been done elsewhere and it's failing miserably. There are riots in the streets due to countries going bankrupt, and it will all occur here if this monstrosity is allowed to continue. Stock up on food, water, and weapons to protect your own.

Good luck everyone.

Really? Where has it been done before that it is failing miserably? Massachusetts seems to be thriving under Romneycare. I haven't heard of any rioting in the streets of Boston or that state going bankrupt. Maybe I just missed it though....

[Ticman]

Ask the people who get dinged by the IRS with this tax if is sorta like a tax. That's like sort of getting shot. Dude it either is or it's not.

If it's not at tax Obamacare is Un-Constitutional. It's right there in the ruling you claimed to have read.

[PST]

So to simplify this. Obama lied and you're okay with it. Is that about right?

And Obama lied how, exactly?

One Justice, over whom he, i.e., the President, has no control decided to say that the mandate was kind of sort of like a tax and that makes Obama a liar? No, I don't think so. But if you feel like that vindicates your view of the President, so be it.

It's either a tax or it's DOA. Can't have it both ways. Did you read the ruling?

Yes, I read the opinions start to finish last night, and I thought I covered this ground pretty thoroughly in an earlier post at viewtopic.php?f=1&t=79233&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... 05#p722380.

There's an old joke:

Q. How many legs does a dog have, if you call his tail a leg?

A. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Look at what Chief Justice Roberts actually says, as quoted in the other post. The mandate is written as a law requiring insurance and a penalty for violating the law. That is how he says he would ordinarily interpret it, but if he did so, he would have to find the law unconstitutional. On the other hand, if he construes it as a tax on not having insurance, he can find the law to be constitutional, and that is what he must do because courts have a duty not to overturn legislation if they can help it.

It is only a tax on those who refuse to obey the law requiring them to buy insurance. It is a "tax" in the same way that any fine imposed on a lawbreaker is a "tax" on breaking the law. It is interesting that the Chief Justice should choose to call this penalty a tax, but his doing so doesn't retroactively turn the President or anyone else who gave the words of the act their ordinary meaning two years ago into liars. The Chief Justice himself says that the "statute reads more naturally as a command to buy insurance than as a tax," and in a different part of the opinion, relating to the Anti-Injunction Act, he holds that the mandate is not a tax by Congress's definition. The four justices that I suspect you admire the most (Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas) argue quite strongly that the mandate is not a tax, so evidently they don't believe that the President is a liar.

[DreamStalker]

I did read the ruling all 100+ pages including syllabus and dissents. Now I don't claim to be a constitutional scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I did take several constitutional law classes in college (double major in Public Affairs and Criminology) and I think I have a good grasp of the ruling. But what I fail to grasp is how you can say that Obama lied because SOMEONE ELSE over whom he has NO CONTROL decided that the mandate was sort of a like a tax. Further, to say that he lied would imply that he knew that it was tax and deliberately misled people and tried to sneak it in under the commerce clause. I don't believe that to be true. So, unless Obama says, "Yep, its a tax." Then he hasn't lied.

The Supreme Court upheld it only because they deemed it was a tax. If Obama says it isn't a tax, then it isn't Constitutional.

Either way, anyone who doesn't think this is going to do significant damage to our economy and our healthcare system is just a naive moron. What Obama has done here has been done elsewhere and it's failing miserably. There are riots in the streets due to countries going bankrupt, and it will all occur here if this monstrosity is allowed to continue. Stock up on food, water, and weapons to protect your own.

Good luck everyone.

Really? Where has it been done before that it is failing miserably? Massachusetts seems to be thriving under Romneycare. I haven't heard of any rioting in the streets of Boston or that state going bankrupt. Maybe I just missed it though....

The rioting won't start for about a year (+/- 6 months) and it will be throughout the country, not just Boston ... and it won't have much to do with healthcare ... and the bankruptcy will be world-wide

So you haven't missed it, none of us will

There is a reason that the world governments are moving more and more quickly towards the largest, most advanced totalitarian police states that have ever existed on this planet ... and it's not for economic stimulus

Two hundred-fifty years of industrial civilization is being harvested by an elite oligarchy as you argue two sides of the same corrupt coin (with all due respect to your service).

[Ticman]

So to simplify this. Obama lied and you're okay with it. Is that about right?

And Obama lied how, exactly?

One Justice, over whom he, i.e., the President, has no control decided to say that the mandate was kind of sort of like a tax and that makes Obama a liar? No, I don't think so. But if you feel like that vindicates your view of the President, so be it.

It's either a tax or it's DOA. Can't have it both ways. Did you read the ruling?

The four justices that I suspect you admire the most (Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas) argue quite strongly that the mandate is not a tax, so evidently they don't believe that the President is a liar.

So if Roberts had agreed with the four you say I admire, Obamacare would be Un-Constitutional. You do a real good job of spinning this but you just can't spin this hard enough.

[PST]

Either way, anyone who doesn't think this is going to do significant damage to our economy and our healthcare system is just a naive moron. What Obama has done here has been done elsewhere and it's failing miserably. There are riots in the streets due to countries going bankrupt, and it will all occur here if this monstrosity is allowed to continue. Stock up on food, water, and weapons to protect your own.

Mikewithe has already pointed out that a law very much like what has now been adopted at the federal level is functioning successfully in Massachusetts with no riots. I would like to add Switzerland, Germany, and Singapore. The Swiss and Germans I know like their systems very much, but I am more impressed by the opinions of several friends who are U.S. citizens living and working long term in Switzerland, because they have had the opportunity to compare. They a highly enthusiastic about the Swiss system. Like the PPACA, it combines (1) a mandate that all individuals buy insurance, (2) guaranteed issue (no one excluded for pre-existing conditions), (3) community rating (no price discrimination for pre-existing conditions), and (4) subsidies for low income to put insurance within everyone's reach. What is different in these other countries is that the system hasn't been grafted on top of a system of employer-provided health insurance, but there was a natural, conservative reluctance here to scrap everything that came before and start from scratch. There is no rioting in Switzerland, Germany, or Singapore either. It really does astonish me when anyone takes such an apocalyptic view of the consequences of this little healthcare law.

[Sloop]

Look at what Chief Justice Roberts actually says, as quoted in the other post. The mandate is written as a law requiring insurance and a penalty for violating the law. That is how he says he would ordinarily interpret it, but if he did so, he would have to find the law unconstitutional. On the other hand, if he construes it as a tax on not having insurance, he can find the law to be constitutional, and that is what he must do because courts have a duty not to overturn legislation if they can help it.
It is only a tax on those who refuse to obey the law requiring them to buy insurance. It is a "tax" in the same way that any fine imposed on a lawbreaker is a "tax" on breaking the law. It is interesting that the Chief Justice should choose to call this penalty a tax, but his doing so doesn't retroactively turn the President or anyone else who gave the words of the act their ordinary meaning two years ago into liars. The Chief Justice himself says that the "statute reads more naturally as a command to buy insurance than as a tax," and in a different part of the opinion, relating to the Anti-Injunction Act, he holds that the mandate is not a tax by Congress's definition. The four justices that I suspect you admire the most (Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas) argue quite strongly that the mandate is not a tax, so evidently they don't believe that the President is a liar.

Excellent debate PST --

However, au contraire ... I take issue with what I highlighted in Red. The "duty" of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution -- period. Nothing else. They specifically should NOT engage in legislation, which IMO is exactly what Roberts just did. He created new meaning to the law, and a very obtuse one at that, with his rendition of "tax" -- that currently NOT ONE WORD exists in the 2000+ pages. David Copperfield would be proud.

[Cereal Killer]

Welllllll ...... let's see ...... Bush Daddy said "Read my lips ... " Tit for tat, eh?

Tit for tat? I certainly hope so - GHWB was denied a second term by the voters.

[mikewithe]

The "duty" of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution -- period. Nothing else.

This is an oversimplification. Read on.

Copied directly from http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/constitutional.aspx

"EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW"-These words, written above the main entrance to the Supreme Court Building, express the ultimate responsibility of the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court is the highest tribunal in the Nation for all cases and controversies arising under the Constitution or the laws of the United States. As the final arbiter of the law, the Court is charged with ensuring the American people the promise of equal justice under law and, thereby, also functions as guardian and interpreter of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court is "distinctly American in concept and function," as Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed. Few other courts in the world have the same authority of constitutional interpretation and none have exercised it for as long or with as much influence. A century and a half ago, the French political observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted the unique position of the Supreme Court in the history of nations and of jurisprudence. "The representative system of government has been adopted in several states of Europe," he remarked, "but I am unaware that any nation of the globe has hitherto organized a judicial power in the same manner as the Americans. . . . A more imposing judicial power was never constituted by any people."

The unique position of the Supreme Court stems, in large part, from the deep commitment of the American people to the Rule of Law and to constitutional government. The United States has demonstrated an unprecedented determination to preserve and protect its written Constitution, thereby providing the American "experiment in democracy" with the oldest written Constitution still in force.

The Constitution of the United States is a carefully balanced document. It is designed to provide for a national government sufficiently strong and flexible to meet the needs of the republic, yet sufficiently limited and just to protect the guaranteed rights of citizens; it permits a balance between society's need for order and the individual's right to freedom. To assure these ends, the Framers of the Constitution created three independent and coequal branches of government. That this Constitution has provided continuous democratic government through the periodic stresses of more than two centuries illustrates the genius of the American system of government.

The complex role of the Supreme Court in this system derives from its authority to invalidate legislation or executive actions which, in the Court's considered judgment, conflict with the Constitution. This power of "judicial review" has given the Court a crucial responsibility in assuring individual rights, as well as in maintaining a "living Constitution" whose broad provisions are continually applied to complicated new situations.

While the function of judicial review is not explicitly provided in the Constitution, it had been anticipated before the adoption of that document. Prior to 1789, state courts had already overturned legislative acts which conflicted with state constitutions. Moreover, many of the Founding Fathers expected the Supreme Court to assume this role in regard to the Constitution; Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, for example, had underlined the importance of judicial review in the Federalist Papers, which urged adoption of the Constitution.

Hamilton had written that through the practice of judicial review the Court ensured that the will of the whole people, as expressed in their Constitution, would be supreme over the will of a legislature, whose statutes might express only the temporary will of part of the people. And Madison had written that constitutional interpretation must be left to the reasoned judgment of independent judges, rather than to the tumult and conflict of the political process. If every constitutional question were to be decided by public political bargaining, Madison argued, the Constitution would be reduced to a battleground of competing factions, political passion and partisan spirit.

Despite this background the Court's power of judicial review was not confirmed until 1803, when it was invoked by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison. In this decision, the Chief Justice asserted that the Supreme Court's responsibility to overturn unconstitutional legislation was a necessary consequence of its sworn duty to uphold the Constitution. That oath could not be fulfilled any other way. "It is emphatically the province of the judicial department to say what the law is," he declared.

In retrospect, it is evident that constitutional interpretation and application were made necessary by the very nature of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had wisely worded that document in rather general terms leaving it open to future elaboration to meet changing conditions. As Chief Justice Marshall noted in McCulloch v. Maryland, a constitution that attempted to detail every aspect of its own application "would partake of the prolixity of a legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. . . . Its nature, therefore, requires that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objects designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves."

The Constitution limits the Court to dealing with "Cases" and "Controversies." John Jay, the first Chief Justice, clarified this restraint early in the Court's history by declining to advise President George Washington on the constitutional implications of a proposed foreign policy decision. The Court does not give advisory opinions; rather, its function is limited only to deciding specific cases.

The Justices must exercise considerable discretion in deciding which cases to hear, since more than 10,000 civil and criminal cases are filed in the Supreme Court each year from the various state and federal courts. The Supreme Court also has "original jurisdiction" in a very small number of cases arising out of disputes between States or between a State and the Federal Government.

When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court. However, when the Court interprets a statute, new legislative action can be taken.

Chief Justice Marshall expressed the challenge which the Supreme Court faces in maintaining free government by noting: "We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding . . . intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."

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[Ticman]

The "duty" of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution -- period.

That fact seems lost these days. The same goes for Congress and the POTUS.

[mikewithe]

The "duty" of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution -- period.

That fact seems lost these days. The same goes for Congress and the POTUS.

But it's only lost when the decision is one with which you don't agree. It's the same with practically every decision the Supreme Court makes. Some strict-interpretationist somewhere believes we're all going to hell in a handbasket because this law or that law was or wasn't overturned.


For those who think there will be apocalyptic consequences to this ruling, believe me when I say, the end is NOT nigh...