Posted on 05/05/2014 1:30:22 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
I believe the Rats in the Senate saw this coming and gutted a House bill and replaced the contents by amendment. It’s apparently an old trick. If the courts outlaw it, that would be sweet!
Who follows the rule of law anymore?
FYI
Hey snuck this one in on me !
Voiding obamacare on a “Constitutional technicality” is a reach in this political climate.
but it would be hugh
Didn’t they take some House bill, strip it empty, and then put in the Senate version of the bill so that they could get around this requirement? I thought that’s what they did. If so, is the argument that it is not enough to have a House-numbered bill, it actually has to be a House bill? Will be a highly technical argument that the libs won’t give two craps about.
Given Roberts jumped through hoops to break the constitution to legalize this in the first place, I have little belief they will uphold the constitution this time.
It may be a technicality but it’s a big one.
Not to mention the political climate is strongly anti-obamacare.
I don’t expect this corrupt SC to do the right thing. They would NEVER admit they made a mistake. NEVER!
Although it was only the House Democrats who voted for it.
The question for the Court should be, if the Senate bill, as is, were originated in its current form in the House, would THAT bill initially have been voted out successfully?
It's one thing to force a majority vote on confirming the Senate-changed bill. It's quite another to make the leap that it implies that the House could have successfully passed that same bill in the first place.
Everyone knows that the House has to pass the exact Senate-amended bill, so they are careful not to amend it themselves, forcing another pass back to the Senate.
That's not the same situation when passing the original bill in the first place. House amendment rules would apply, and opposition Representatives would be proposing amendments, and drafting committees would be negotiating compromises, so that the first bill out would not look like the amended one that came back.
If SCOTUS upholds this Senate-back-door attempt to originate revenue bills, then that is a Senate power-grab of one of the few unique powers of the House.
Remember, the House has the unique power to impeach, to originate revenue bills, and to resolve electoral college votes which fail to meet the majority. The Senate has the power to try impeachments, and of advice and consent of Executive appointees.
Now, the Senate also has the power to originate revenue bills, too.
-PJ
No, oral arguments are Thursday in the D.C. Court of Appeals not the Supreme Court.
The article you posted yesterday from WaPo was regarding this case is excellent.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3151917/posts
For the record, here’s a comment I posted in yesterday’s thread about why Obamacare doesn’t meet precedential exceptions to the Origination Clause (IANAL):
Obamacare doesn’t meet the first exception because, as George Will wrote, “the proceeds go to the Treasury for the general operations of the federal government, not to fund a particular program,” and as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, the penalty is “paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and ‘shall be assessed and collected in the same manner’ as tax penalties.
Obamacare doesn’t meet the second exception because, as Chief Justice Roberts wrote, the individual mandate penalty “is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are” and there are no “negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS, which means the penalty is not a fine assessed to punish unlawful conduct.
Chief Justice Roberts may yet turn out to be a magnificent b-——d. We shall see.
I seem to recall that, too.
Iirc there were a couple of freepers who promoted this argument when many were calling Roberts just the b-——d. Stating he’d set it up to be unconstitutional. Just had not seen any action on this premise
Am waiting in anxious anticipation for the MAGNIFICATION !
it would be such a sweet just dessert.
I seem to recall some defense of John Roberts in so far as he deliberately planted this option with his decision.
However, assuming that he was fully aware of the origin of obamacare at the time of his tax ruling, I cannot get my hopes up that he will somehow craft a ruling that negates it on this basis.
The United States Constitution Article I. Section 7.
“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives;
but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
(Q. 1) - Was this a bill for raising revenue?
(Q. 2.) - Did it originate in the House?
(Q. 3) - Does “may propose amendments” include replacing the entire title and text of a bill
with a new title and new text because the original bill number remained intact?
(Q. 4) - When the House accepted the senate bill, did the House cede their power to object?
In the mean time it’s given he American people time to wake up a bit!
I recall that. There were some who thought it was pure genius on his part. We shall see.
I asked Shannon Bream (on Twitter) to report on it for us. She said she is keeping an eye on it. So, we should get word from her on Thursday.
“(Q. 4) - When the House accepted the senate bill, did the House cede their power to object?”
That would seem to be a “legal” question, not a Constitutional one.
The question should be: Did the House violate the Constitution? insofar as the Constitution does not provide for the option for the House to cede this power.
The bill started in the house, the contents of the bill started in the Senate.
The SC has no integrity.
The math is easy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.