Scalia And Company May Have Already Shown Their Hand On Obamacare Subsidies

TPM.com ^ | July 24, 2014 | Dylan Scott

[Resettozero]

Doesn’t this prove that any law negotiated with obama is pointless, if he could simply rewrite his own law?


Already has, in my non-legal opinion. Your lawyer may vary.

[Resettozero]

It’s not surprising the Circuit Courts differed. They have to figure out what Congress was thinking, on a subject that Congress wasn’t thinking about.

Pass it to read it. Don't let them ever forget.

[GeronL]

They change the law on a whim “as the HHS Secretary may direct” all the time. They can change that too I suppose.

[MaxMax]

Obama needs Congress and the Senate to approve any changes to law.
But then we're talking about Obama here, and the crony brigade.

All this illegality will be struck down once the power shifts.
Damn, wrong again, we're talking about the new GOP here.

I'm not giving up!

[Political Junkie Too]

Revise that.

There are really only 2 branches of Government:

1. The Democrats

2. The Republicans

The former Constitutional branches have been subverted by the parties. Law and precedent no longer matter. The only thing that matters now is protecting the viability of the party in power. To that end, they corrupt the Constitutional branches to justify whatever the party in power needs done at that moment to protect its interests.

-PJ

[Resettozero]

There are really only 2 branches of Government:

1. The Democrats

2. The Republicans

By your standard, there is now only one.

[Political Junkie Too]

Yup.

-PJ

[Eagle Forgotten]

I just keep wondering, how did the Democrats ask the CBO to score the bill? Did they ask the CBO to score it with exclusively individual state exchanges issuing subsidies?

My other post took a guess that they asked for scoring on the assumption that all states would have exchanges. Thanks to the link provided by SoFloFreeper, I now learn I was wrong. According to the (pro-Obamacare) law professor writing at http://balkin.blogspot.com/2013/12/how-congress-works-and-obamacare.html?m=1 the CBO did not assume all state exchanges but did assume subsidies for everyone:

The government and amici have picked up the CBO argument in this case, including providing a letter to Congress from CBO director Douglas Elmendorf testifying to CBO’s initial and ongoing understanding that the subsidies would not be for the state exchanges alone. Opponents have offered nothing as a counterargument except for the fact that CBO’s initial calculation assumed, as did most others policymakers, that most of the exchanges would be state operated (because that is what the federalists now opposing the ACA wanted!). (my emphasis)

So that argument turns out to be one on the pro-subsidy side.

[Clump]

I’ve read that they deliberately put the language in because by doing so it caused the CBO to get the number under a trillion.
So yes it’s the law, and the IRS decision to give subsidies through federal exchanges amounts to a federal agency spending taxpayer money which is exclusively up to Congress.
They are trying a bait and switch.

[Chewbarkah]

Abbe Gluck’s opinion is just spin. Seems to me that Scalia’s point was conditional on a premise that can’t be met. Scalia will know that.

Justice Roberts ruled that Congress was empowered to create ACA through its power to “tax”.

But taxes and tax subsidies must be levied equally. For example, the federal government cannot allow Earned Income Credits for residents “Blue” states, and disallow Earned Income Credits for residents of “Red” states. If they could, they would.

But ACA allows or denies federal tax subsidies based on which state a person resides in. How can this be “equal treatment under the law”?

[Resettozero]

But ACA allows or denies federal tax subsidies based on which state a person resides in.

Hope it gets "interpreted" that way!