WaPo Blogger Undercuts His Own Case against Halbig

The National Review ^ | Joly 30, 2014 | Charles C..W. Cooke

[SteveH]

...

In an attempt to establish intent, Sargent quotes Yvette Fontenot, “a lead Finance staffer who was directly involved in the merger of the bills”:

During the merger of the two bills, we layered the HELP Committee language that established a federal fallback on top of the Finance Committee language that included “exchange established by the state.” The result was the tax credits were to apply to all exchanges, both state and federal.

Frankly, this smacks of post-rationalization and oversimplification. It is easy to forget this in the heat of political passion, but when the HELP and Finance bills were fused together, nobody expected the result to become law. Before Congress ever had a chance to address the bill’s manifold inconsistencies, Scott Brown was elected to the Senate in Massachusetts, drafting was brought screeching to an ignominious halt, and the Democratic party was forced to rush through what it had managed to contrive up to that point. This, conveniently enough, is missing from Sargent’s account of the legislative history.

And what of that account? Well, once again, it serves primarily to aid rather than to undercut the case against the law.

...

[dsc]

So, state exchanges only. I wonder if that battle will have an effect on the outcome of the war.

[SteveH]

Liberal interpretation of ACA is consistent with the ends-justfies-the-means mentality.

Don’t pay attention to what is written, or who wrote it. We intended something else.

Liberals will buy into that (regardless of whether it is true or not) because what they consider to be good intent trumps all other considerations.

For example, under ends-justifies-the-means mentality, lying about intent becomes justified.

[RIghtwardHo]

Do understand that in judicial analysis that “intent” is at the bottom of the list of what is considered. It is given very little weight.

Just an FYI. *shrug*