On the first day of oral arguments in the case challenging President Obama’s national health care law, justices seemed skeptical that the individual mandate should be considered a tax — one of the main consitutional defenses being offered for the law. According to the discussion on C-SPAN this morning, the question of whether or not the individual mandate is a tax is important, not because this is one of the main defenses for Obamacare, but because if the justices decide that is is a tax, there is a law that will prevent them from deciding if Obamacare is constitutional until after the tax has actually been charged.
Exactly right! The “tax” wouldn’t be “collected” until 2014, two years after the next election. I find it interesting that liberal Justices—as well as the Obama Administration—are leaning to it not being a tax, while conservative Justices seem to be leaning toward it being a tax. If not a tax, then SCOTUS could rule well before the election.
It just smacks of election-year politics; striking down any part of this law opens the door for all kinds of attacks against conservatives as being hateful, mean spirited, and (of course) racist.