Posted on 07/02/2012 9:37:44 AM PDT by donjuanluis07
If you read my recent post, "Supreme Court Upholds Poll Tax?" you might have a little trouble understanding why this is important to all Americans. The reason is simple, the decision made by the Supreme Court on the 28th of June, a day that will live in infamy, WAS ILLEGAL!!! Our constitution is clear about the power and type of authority the Federal Government has to levy taxes, and the Federal Government of the United States of America is barred by our Constitution from imposing a direct tax on individuals. In other words they may NOT impose a direct tax on an individual because he or she does not purchase a health care product.
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“I trade my labor/skills/knowledge evenly for a set amount.
I make no gain in doing so as my time and labor”
You absolutely do gain, and no one trades their whatever evenly and for a set amount. You are remunerated differently depending on what you’re doing and how others value it. If that weren’t true, no one would ever bother switching jobs.
“So Roberts didn’t call it a ‘tax on not obtaining health insurance’ but Congress did”
Congress said no such thing. The law as passed has it as a penalty for not following the mandate. Roberts changed it into a tax so as not to strike it down. If in doing so Roberts said Congress called it a tax, then he’s liar.
Anyway, what’s the difference? Obviously the decision is based on Roberts calling it a tax on not obtaining health insurance. Whether or not Congress also said so is irrelevant.
“But everyone still has to either follow the mandate and buy insurance or pay the penalty tax, right?
It’s ‘do one or the other’, isn’t it?”
Yes, but that doesn’t mean the mandate legally exists. The tax is all you need to make what say above true. The mandate is implied by the tax. That the mandate is also expressed in words is, like I said, a historical curiosity. It has no force of law.
All the law has to say is that if you don’t have insurance you will be taxed. Under normal circumstances it would be up to you to get the message that if you do buy insurance you won’t be taxed.
“Seems like the Government got what they wanted and now they’re stuck with it.”
What the government wanted, or at least that part that passed and signed onto Obamacare, was to nationalize the healthcare industry. They would prefer to do so without raising taxes on people who aren’t rich, or at least by fooling a majority of voters that it’ll only cost the rich. They’ll call it a tax before abandoning it, though, so they included in the defense the tax power rationale.
So, yes, they got what they wanted, but not all they wanted. This is not ideal, but they’ll take it.
@ capiche
Italo-American dialect of capisci
@capisce
From Italian capisci, second person present tense form of capire (“to understand”), from Latin capere (“to grasp, seize”)
Often used in a threatening manner, suggesting the Italian Mafia.
You should really consider not using that word, Boss.
I think you 've got the cart before the horse, there, pardner. Congress created a tax, and put it into the tax code, to be treated as a tax, held against specified taxpayers, and enforced by the taxing authority.
Then Congress called it a penalty, because Congress is made up of politicians.
Roberts, being on the Court and, at least nominally, being paid to make things clear, pointed out that it's a tax in every way it was specified to function, and he wasn't going to be snowed by political labels about penalties.
Roberts is right. He did create anything - Congress did. He just had the balls to acknowledge what it defines itself as in it's own law - a tax.
And you know when you figure out whether you have to pay it? When you fill out your income tax form.
Roberts is right. He did not create anything - Congress did.
Congress said it IS NOT a tax. So Roberts did create something that Congress and the President said did not exist, a tax on my none action.
“Congress created a tax, and put it into the tax code, to be treated as a tax, held against specified taxpayers, and enforced by the taxing authority.
Then Congress called it a penalty, because Congress is made up of politicians.”
There are two pits we risk falling into with this issue: on one side is political semantics and the other legalese. Yes, Congress deliberately denied it was a tax because taxes are generally unpopular, unless you can convince people it doesn’t apply to them. Republicans are right to call it a tax politically speaking whether or not it actually is a tax because it does the same thing as a tax, i.e. raise money for the government.
As far as its technical legal definition, I don’t know. It’s more of a fine than a tax, but what’s the difference, really? The reason I call the original language a penalty or fine and the reason I know Roberts rewrote the law in the interest of slipping it past the Constitution is not so much that the bill called it a “penalty.” It’s because were it a tax like other taxes that aren’t fines/penalties there would have just been the tax, that’s it. Instead it had a mandate and a concomitant penalty.
Thing is, taxes are routinely written so as to influence behavior. But usually the carrot and sticks are implicit. COgnress doesn’t go around ordering people to do something persay; rather they tell them this is what will happen should they have this or that level income or this or buy this or that product. The mandate as laid out in the bill if only justified by the taxing power legally speaking doesn’t exist. It is empty verbiage.
SO why’s it in there? Because originally, i.e. before Roberts changed it, it was a mandate-penalty setup. Now it’s just a tax. Gone is the idea that you’re being penalized by having your money taken away should you not be covered. In is the idea that there’s a tax you can avoid if you buy insurance.
My outline is full of loopy logic and insane distinctions, I know, but such is supreme court jurisprudence.
“Roberts, being on the Court and, at least nominally, being paid to make things clear, pointed out that it’s a tax in every way it was specified to function, and he wasn’t going to be snowed by political labels about penalties.”
In doing so, you may have noticed, he erased the mandate. The reason everyone was blindsided by the decision is we were all focused on the constitutionality of the mandate. We assumed the ruling would primarily concern the commerce clause, because according to the way the bill is written the mandate is the hinge. Along comes Roberts, and all that matters is the tax. If the tax is constitutional so is the law, and who cares about the mandate? Might as well be blank space, since the tax implies it on its own.
“He just had the balls to acknowledge what it defines itself as in it’s own law - a tax.”
Exactly the opposite of balls, actually. He would’ve shot it down along with the conservatives and Kennedy had he not a burning desire to defer to Congress and were he not worried about the court’s reputation in liberal law schools and the MSM. So he went fishing for a way to get around the obviously illegal mandate and hit upon calling the penalty a tax and leaving it at that.
“you know when you figure out whether you have to pay it? When you fill out your income tax form.”
You shouldn’t have to wait till then. The lower limit will be publicized and presumably you’d know whether you have insurance coverage or were granted a waiver or whatever.
Might I infer that your position is based mostly on the perfidy of Dems and the distinction without a difference between a tax and a penalty, or a tapenalty/penax? Well, there’s something there, as tax or no the penalty as written does the same thing as a tax. That’s what Republicans should say, by the way. That call it what you will if it acts like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and so on.
But I shudder at insisting that it is a tax the way Roberts said it was a tax, which it wasn’t For him to be right in that respect, he has to ignore completely the way the bill was written and the logic of the mandate-penalty as set up. I wretch when people defend him for his restraint when he blatantly rewrote the law. Judicial review is one thing, defering to Congress and giving the benefit of the doubt to constitutionality another. Neither suggest you should look for any possible construction of the law so as to make it appear legal. Going that far is something else altogether. Never, ever, should you rewrite the law so that it is constitutional. That’s too far for the most restrained of deferential conservative justices.
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