The Senate bill has to be on substantially the same topic. This is a paraphrase. Gutting the Veterans bill, changing the name and totally changing the topic does not meet that test.
It is really hard to say what was going through the Chief Justice’s mind, but if it was: Let the country see how much pain the democrats have inflicted on the country and we will strike it down later; then he was brilliant or very lucky. Given the timing of when it would likely reach the Supreme Court and the unpopularity of the law at that time, I give it an 80% chance of being struck down. I give it a 65% chance of being struck down in the DC court.
Reid’s nuclear madness was precisely for packing the DC court to shoot this issue down. I predict the DC Court of Appeals will rule in Obamacare’s favor.
Changing or amending a tax related bill that originated in the House is allowed by the Senate. The fact that Pelosi’s House ‘deemed it passed’ when it came back means the House was in agreement. A federal court saying otherwise risks characterizing the judiciary as micromanaging legislative processes. I just don’t think there is hope with this argument approach but I would love to be wrong.
The depth and cunning of the trickery by the democrats is astounding. They knew they could not originate Obamacare in the House as a tax measure. They handed it to the Senate as an innocuous tax bill knowing it would come back as Obamacare, and then deemed it passed.
The American people are against Obamacare en masse. The best way to rid the country of it is to repeal it. To do that people will be compelled to look at the only force that leads on repealing it, the Tea Party Conservatives.