Posted on 09/15/2012 9:08:54 AM PDT by WilliamIII
In a new spin to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that a penalty levied on folks who fail to buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act is a tax, the Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation has launched legal action alleging the tax is illegal because it was introduced in the Senate rather than the House. Revenue-raising bills are required by the origination clause in the U.S. Constitution to be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, PLF attorneys allege in an amended complaint to an existing lawsuit pending in U.S. District Court in the District Columbia. The local law firm is representing Iowa small business owner Matt Sissel in the complaint free of charge.
(Excerpt) Read more at bizjournals.com ...
Another story:
New Obamacare Challenge: The Origination Clause
by Randy Barnett
http://www.volokh.com/2012/09/13/new-obamacare-challenge-the-origination-clause/
so now they’;ve changed Obamacare to “Affordable Care”?
Do not be seduced bny the Evil One!
Barry is making private healthcare impossible for average working families to afford, he’ll have none of that white privilege going on. Vote the scum out.
Side note: If we do not take the Senate we will have one hell of a time doing anything. Romney can only reverse executive orders that King Obama gave us without the Senate and/or House. But he can clean house and dump all the communists empire King Obama put in place. And it make take years to clean up.
As long as the Democrats have control of the Senate, NO RULE counts except theirs.
To bad the bill started in the house. It was a completely unrelated bill that had its guts ripped out and its title changed but it was a house bill nonetheless.
Totally baseless. Pelosi had the House vote on and pass a “bill”, which the Senate then carved up, hollowed out and amended ad infinitum. So the Shell Game will withstand any court challenge on a technicality because, yes, the original “bill” passed the House - the Senate then took the House passed “shell” and stuffed it with whatever they wanted - and that passed the Senate. This is all a pipe dream. Or a bunch of lawyers looking to collect legal fees for a doomed case.
Totally baseless you say? Maybe not ...
“If any act violates the Origination Clause, it would seem to be the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court has never approved the “strike-and-replace” procedure the Congress employed here.”
- Randy Barnett, Georgetown Law professor
http://www.volokh.com/2012/09/13/new-obamacare-challenge-the-origination-clause/
The option makes a mockery of the 14th Amendment.
Yes. It’s like the commercials with all the crones who have had life lift and come out looking like youngsters. What ended up in nothing like what started
Yes. It’s like the commercials with all the crones who have had life lift and come out looking like youngsters. What ended up in nothing like what started
But, the suit needs to be dragged through the court to end any controversy
The Constitution also gives each house control over their own rules.
The bill passed the house. The Senate amended the bill, then passed it. The house then passed it again approving the amendments from the House.
Since the House approved the bill as amended, and since it can be argued that the House would not approve a bill that violated it’s perogotives, then proving a Constitutional violation is difficult.
Call PLF and feed it to them for their pro-bono lawsuit.
You da man!!!
Also they have a pretty good won/lost record at the Supremes, so hang onto your hat antonico!!!
Thank you so much for posting this encouraging info. The Sacramento Business Journal has been so taken over by socialistic leftists in the past 25 years that it’s surprising they even published this.
And never mind that the SCOTUS originated the term ‘tax’ Nd afterward declared it Constitutional. The Bill NEVER would have passed at all if the mandate had been called a tax originally.
I daily thank God that we had men in the 1770’s, WW I & II instead of ‘this is immpossible’ ‘can’t do this’ guys like you hidding in the foxholes.
We’d still be subjects, probably speaking German with your attitude.
Thankfully we have a few REAL men who are ready, willing, and ABLE to reverse this.
“The bill passed the house. The Senate amended the bill, then passed it. The house then passed it again approving the amendments from the House.”
Right, but if you read the brief, the Senate struck the entire contents of the House-passed bill and then substituted its own language. This apparently is unprecedented (at least as it relates to Origination challenges). Second, the Court does not allow Congress to simply ignore the Constitution. In Munoz vs. Flores, “Justice Stevens filed a concurring opinion in this case in which he argued that a bill can originate unconstitutionally but nevertheless still become an enforceable law if passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president. Because of this belief Stevens argued that it was not necessary for the Court to decide whether the statute was passed in violation of the Origination Clause because it passed both houses of Congress was signed by the president.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Munoz-Flores
But the Court ruled ““Although the House certainly can refuse to pass a bill because it violates the Origination Clause, that ability does not absolve this Court of its responsibility to consider constitutional challenges to congressional enactments.” (see p. 8 of the brief).
I’m no lawyer, but my interpretation is that this means that the mere fact that the House was willing to go along with these shenanigans does not mean it was constitutional. If shell bills are permitted to be used to end-run the Origination clause restriction, then de facto, that restriction has been rendered null and void. I think the situation would have been much different if the Senate had taken up the House’s own health reform bill and amended it, adding some taxes in the process. My understanding is that the Court HAS allowed amendments of this sort to be made. But in those cases, Congress was not blatantly violating the whole spirit of the Origination clause restriction.
It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Maybe Roberts anticipated exactly this sort of roadblock when he made it appear to have given ACA a victory when he instead knew that it would get deep-sixed by his giving the opponents a second bite of the apple etc. If that was his plan and it works, I’d say this was a brilliant move.
It would have been very easy to inject significant competition into health care by utilizing the original intent of the Commerce Clause. Congress could simply have allowed Americans to buy insurance across state lines thereby undermining the collusion between state legislatures and insurers. It would also kill mandates.
Instead, having so many masters to please, they have to shred the Constitution.
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