Posted on 04/09/2014 2:09:13 AM PDT by kingattax
VIDEO AT LINK
KATY, TEXAS--A lawsuit filed by a Houston area doctor against the Affordable Care Act is moving forward to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit filed by Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of Hotze Health and Wellness Center in Katy, challenges the Obamacare law based upon the origination clause of the Constitution.
In referring to what is known as The Origination Clause, “Article 1, section 7 of the U.S. Constitution every tax bill, revenue bill has to start in the House of Representatives,” Hotze explained. “It can’t start in the Senate.”
In this exclusive interview below with Breitbart Texas, Dr. Hotze explains how the Senate took a Veterans Tax Credit bill that started in the House and stripped everything out of the bill, including the title, and substituted the Affordable Care Act legislation. “If the Senate can do that, then there is no origination clause, because, the Senate can turn any bill that came from the House into a tax raising bill, and that’s wrong.”
Dr. Hotze’s attorney, Andy Schlaffly told the Washington Times, “What’s nice about this case, Hotze v. Sebelius, is the trial court resolved all the procedural issues in favor of Dr. Hotze, so they got to the substance at the trial level,” said Mr. Schlafly. “That makes this case a stronger case than most of the other ones.”
Dr. Hotze noted in the interview that the 5th Circuit Court is the most conservative court in the country and this makes this lawsuit one of the most likely to survive long enough to make it to the Supreme Court.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Where Justice Roberts Roberts changed the individual mandate penalty to a tax.
Except that the bill DID originate in the house. It started life as a bill to “fix” the tax situation that military families sometimes face when they buy a house, then get transferred to a new base before they reach some time threshold. When it reached the Senate, good ol’ Dingy Harry gutted it and wrote the ACA language into the resulting “shell bill”. It’s legal, but really overreaches the Senate’s authority to “amend” bills. Some other Senator is on-record as stating that they did it this way specifically to avoid this. I’m surprised the lower courts haven’t already tossed this suit, but if the 5th Circuit is even remotely on the ball, the suit will die there.
This is a case of failure to do Due Diligence. There are plenty of genuine hinky things about the ACA; this isn’t the way to attack it and can only make genuine challenges seem more vindictive and frivolous.
I should add that if the Senate had done the “shell bill” trick with a NON-tax-related bill, then Hotze would be right. However, in this case, they deliberately chose a tax bill to rewrite as the ACA. I get what Hotze wants to challenge, but he’s going about it wrong. I’d guess that the lower court is liberal and might even have let this one through just so similar (but more valid) challenges will be less likely to succeed in the future.
Legal? Sez who? Cite precedence.
It has never been challenged before this.
IMO, the bill number is NOT the bill. The bill is the text, not the number, and the text of that bill had been completely removed, leaving only the number.
You can start here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/03/12/the-origination-clause-and-the-problem-of-double-deference/
Then you might slog through this one: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2009/10/the_invasion_of_the_bill_snatchers.html
If those don't help you, then you can try this last one: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=shell+bill+origination+clause
The "shell bill" practice has been around for years, and used by both parties. The ACA is probably the most egregious example of it though.
Why are the titles of all of your postings in CAPS?
Doomed to failure or it’s just a lark. Individuals have no standing to sue on the basis of origination clause.
The origination clause is a use it or lose it proposition. Or in other words, it’s a negative affirmation process. Congress has to assert it’s right, or it’s tacit approval (the negative affirmation part). The House cannot sit back and see how the law goes before it decides to assert the right.
Now, the bill was passed as a penalty, Roberts ruled it a tax after the fact. So one would think that the House has another bite at that apple then, but didn’t take it. So here we are now and that right is gone.
I’m sure this was not a mere oversight on the part of the House leadership. Meaning, they spun the wheel and rolled the dice on this issue.
there were several threads i posted and Breitbart was the source. the titles there happened to be in caps and were just copied and pasted.
anything else we can do for you ?
> “ In this exclusive interview below with Breitbart Texas, Dr. Hotze explains how the Senate took a Veterans Tax Credit bill that started in the House and stripped everything out of the bill, including the title, and substituted the Affordable Care Act legislation. “If the Senate can do that, then there is no origination clause, because, the Senate can turn any bill that came from the House into a tax raising bill, and that’s wrong.” “
I want this to go all the way towards striking down Obamacare but it has a flaw.
The flaw is that when it was sent back to the House, Pelosi deemed it passed without even knowing the details inside it. But all that doesn’t matter because the House accepted it and passed it. If the House had problems with the origination argument, then they could have objected but they did not object.
The intent of the origination clause is for the House to always have in effect a veto power over taxes. But if they pass a bill regardless of where it came from, then it is as good as if it originated in the House.
I know the way the democrats passed it was rotten. They took an inconsequential tax bill, stripped it, called it an affordable healthcare bill (later to be called a tax) and then rammed it down the throats of the American people.
If they had called Obamacare a tax or originated it as a tax, it would have died in committee but they called it healthcare when in fact it is a massive tax. And Americans will not pass any massive new tax in this day and age so the whole thing is a scam.
The way forward is to repeal every letter of it. And no ‘replacement’ plan either.
“anything else we can do for you ?”
Who is we?
Sheese! Don’t be such a prick.
The question of this lawsuit is not whether they stripped a different tax bill and replaced it with the obamacare bill. That is obvious. The question is whether THAT process is a violation of the tax origination question.
If it is legitimate, then the origination clause has been amended by legislative chicanery and rendered moot.
Little pig is 100% right. I remember this same debate back when Obamacare was passed and I looked up the original bill myself. The Senate offered an amendment to that bill that struck the entire language of the bill and replaced it with Obamacare. The House voted on this amended bill.
I do remember that Dingy Harry put in the Obamacare bill a Manager’s Amendment stating that the bill originated in the House.
What you fail to understand, piglet, is that the bill drafted in the Senate was not intended to be a tax bill but a Crime bill. In other words the failure to get insurance would result in a penalty and not a tax. It did not become a tax bill until John Benedict Roberts twisted the law into something it was never intended to be, ie a revenue bill, that the bill then became a revenue bill.
Now that it is a tax bill the question that must be resolved is whether its passage was constitutional since the TEXT of the bill in its entirety began in the senate.
The process of stripping and replacing revenue bills in the senate is blatantly unconstitutional. It violates both the spirit and the letter of the law.
Think it’s interesting that Hotze’s is behind this. His PAC has been sending out emails soliciting donations purportedly to support this venture. However, his PAC did strongly support Dewhurst, George P. Bush, Cornyn and several other RINOS during the Texas primaries earlier this year. Had to have spent a lot of money on that election.
From the Library of Congress, the opening paragraph and headers from the original bill:
"To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009'. SEC. 2. WAIVER OF RECAPTURE OF FIRST-TIME HOMEBUYER CREDIT FOR INDIVIDUALS ON QUALIFIED OFFICIAL EXTENDED DUTY."
In other words, a bill addressing tax revenues.
So what you fail to understand is that I've already done the research, and you haven't, and therefore your supercilious pontificating is empty, and makes you look arrogant and uninformed.
Here's the LOC link: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3590.ih:
Further, in the situation you describe, Hotze’s lawsuit falls apart, because there is no requirement for Crime Bills to originate in the House, if that was the original intent. Nevertheless, the Senate used the Shell Bill trick to avoid any problems IN CASE the ACA ended up being treated as a revenue bill. They explicitly stated this before passage; I linked to an article quoting a Senator on that in another thread I commented in that also tried to push the “it’s not a House revenue bill, so it’s not legal” angle.
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