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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? If they did, this would indicate their intent with the language used in drafting the bill. Anybody know how we could find out?

Call your Congressman or one of your Senators (if theyre GOP) and ask the staffer who answers that their office look into it. Make sure you mention that you are a constituent.

They should punt the request to the Congressional Research Service, which should run the issue to ground. The scoring request, the methodology for scoring and the report from CBO should be part of the public record.

I think most people (both sides of the aisle) assumed that the states would set up their own exchanges. The most obvious request to CBO would be: “Score the bill on the assumption that every state sets up its own exchange.”

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.

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.

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.