Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open anew and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do.Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce,not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited andenumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce."
...Nor can the individual mandate be sustained under the Necessary and Proper Clause as an integral part of the Affordable Care Act’s other reforms. Each of this Court’s prior cases upholding lawsunder that Clause involved exercises of authority derivative of, and in service to, a granted power. The individual mandate, by contrast, vests Congress withthe extraordinary ability to create the necessary predicate to the exercise of an enumerated power and draw within its regulatory scopethose who would otherwise be outside of it. Even if the individualmandate is “necessary” to the Affordable Care Act’s other reforms,such an expansion of federal power is not a “proper” means for making those reforms effective.
It's easy to say the EU should dissolve because they are having problems, but it's more difficult when our founders set up a 'more perfect union'.
Time enough. We've seen the outcome. It doesn't suit my needs and has become destructive of those ends.
We don't need a federal government.
/johnny
And the Dodgers outhit the Mets tonight but it didn’t matter. The Mets won the game.
Roberts also screwed Romney, who called his Massachussets mandate (tax) a “fee, not a tax.” Now we know it was a tax and Obama will point this out in their debates:
Romney: Mr. Obama wants to tax the middle class.
Obama: You taxed the middle class as governor.
Romney: Uh. Oh yeah. Sorry.
I really don’t think that Obama gives a rat’s ass how he gets to take over the US health care system, so long as he gets to take it over. Whether it’s called a tax, a penalty, or unicorn turds, what matters is that he got what he wanted and Roberts handed it to him.
As nice as it would be to have the Commerce Clause rolled back to its correct interpretation, I’ll believe it when I see it.
I expect what we’ll see is the worst of both worlds: the Commerce Clause AND the new wrinkle on “taxing power” being used to justify expansions of federal power.
Liberals absolutely love John Roberts. He’s the new media lib plaything like John McCain.
Lipstick meets pig. Here, we may have a case of more lipstick than pig.
Failed logic, there are 2 parts,
1. The individual mandate requires people to buy insurance
2. The penalty is to pay a tax
There’s no fixing this on fine points, like whether a tax must go into effect to be challenged.
The libs won and they will quickly move on — to a new Constitutional Convention.
Mark my words.
Whatever. His actions killed us.
Try explaining this to all of the businesses that are going to have to close, all of the resulting unemployed and all of the bankrupted families who can't afford the "largest tax increase in the history of mankind".
F* him, he's killed us...
I’m sorry, LJ, but Roberts did not injure Obama at all today.
Today’s decision gave Obama ObamaCare. It also gave it to America.
Worse, the legislation was specifically written as a mandate, and in order to save it, Roberts said that it was written as a tax.
He created a fix out of clean air. That’s the worst that happened today. The Court is now on record with a precedent that if you can change a word or two in any legislation, then go ahead and do it. They should have changed the wording of the stolen valor act, too. They should have changed words in the Arizona law. But they didn’t.
They only changed words in the healthcare law.
Now WE are funding abortion.
“I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”
— John Roberts, 2005.
Does anybody think ANY Democrat Senator, Congressman, or Obama will even want to be anywhere near the campaign trail this fall with this Tax Monster draped around their neck?
If the Pubbies don’t manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again...we’re talking 70 senators!!!
I decided today to revoke my pledge to never vote for Romney. I will hold my nose (and other parts) and vote for the wimp party, one more time. Obama and his (Obamacare) legacy MUST BE STOPPED!!!
Which would I prefer Obama nominated Supreme Court Justices or Romney nominated Supreme Court Justices?
Bush may have given us Roberts, but he also gave us Alito.
Would Obama give us an Alito?
But that's no reason to celebrate, because the rest of the ruling says that they don't matter anyway, and that Congress has essentially unlimited power to compel anyone to do anything, as long as the noncompliance penalty is a "tax".
Congress can stop the decades-long "commerce clause" tap dance now and simply ram whatever they want through by making the penalties "taxes/fines" rather than jail time. But if you accumulate enough taxes that you can't pay them, what happens in the end anyway?
Who needs an "assault weapons ban"? We'll just levy a $10,000 annual tax on "assault weapons"! The ones who can afford to pay that are the ones we'd generally exempt anyway! You didn't separate your recyclables out of your trash? That's a $1,000 tax per offense. Every house is required to have solar panels, or pay $2,500 a year in extra tax.
And so on, and so on...
Bullcrap. That Congress can now tax anything for any purpose invalidates the Commerce Clause.