Posted on 12/20/2017 3:44:38 AM PST by Libloather
“This is where I think Chief Justice Roberts gets a bit of a bad rap here on FR. If you look at the details of that particular challenge to ObamaCare, his decision — that the individual mandate is constitutional because it is a legitimate “tax” — is not all that outlandish.”
I totally disagree! If it is not outlandish to claim that the government has the power to levy a tax on your refusal to purchase something the government has said you must purchase then what is to say that the government cannot require you to purchase, oh, let’s just say, ten pounds of butter per month and levy a tax on you if you fail to do so. That would mean that there is no limit to the tyranny that can be imposed under the constitution. I haven’t touched on the fact that Obama’s minions swore that it was NOT a tax but a penalty until the court ruled that it was a tax and therefore constitutional.
In my view to say that the Obamacare mandate meets constitutional requirements is to say that the constitution places no limit whatsoever on the power of government and therefore all the time spent writing the constitution was wasted.
Roberts himself said it best after the decision was announced. He said something to this effect:
"It's not the job of the U.S. Supreme Court to fix bad laws."
He was telling us all that it was the duty of Congress to repeal ObamaCare, not the U.S. Supreme Court. And we're still waiting, almost eight years after the GOP promised us time and time again that they'd repeal it.
There are plenty of other provisions of ObamaCare that probably wouldn't stand up to constitutional scrutiny. What's interesting that most of them have never been challenged in the Federal court system.
“An income tax is constitutional, which means there is nothing unconstitutional about the government imposing a tax on 100% of your income. Taxing you $1 for failing to buy something that costs $5 to $6 isn’t nearly as egregious, is it?”
I am not at all convinced that the income tax is constitutional but that is another question. If, as you say, there is nothing unconstitutional about taxing you on 100 percent of your income, or did you mean taxing you 100 percent OF your income, then there is no limit on how much they can tax you for not buying something. As to whether one is more egregious than the other that has nothing to do with the question of whether the constitution permits it. Once again I say, if the constitution allows the Obamacare mandate and the “tax” imposed for disobeying the mandate then we have total tyranny and there is no use to even pretend otherwise.
Your argument seems to me as fallacious as that of others who compare the Obamacare mandate to the mandate to have liability insurance on automobiles operated on highways maintained by the states.
“There are plenty of other provisions of ObamaCare that probably wouldn’t stand up to constitutional scrutiny. What’s interesting that most of them have never been challenged in the Federal court system.”
Any court system that upholds the mandate and the “tax” for not obeying the mandate would likely uphold almost anything else that could have been challenged. That ruling was equivalent to declaring that the constitution is null and void and there is no limit to what the federal government may do.
We have over a year to think about it (the consequences)...individual mandate doesn’t go away until 1-1-2019.
If the Federal government imposed a flat tax of $1,500 on every resident of the U.S., would it be constitutional? I would think so. If so, then how is it unconstitutional if it decides not to levy the tax on some people who buy a certain product or service? That’s basically how the ObamaCare “penalty” works.
You're actually wrong about that. Hobby Lobby has been granted an injunction that allows them to avoid certain ObamaCare provisions based on religious freedom principles. Any insurance carrier that wanted to challenge the mandatory coverage provisions would probably win, but those companies are finding it easier to just stop selling health plans entirely.
If you go back and read the SCOTUS ruling in that particular case, you'll see that they actually overturned some ObamaCare provisions even though they upheld the individual mandate.
Do you know people in it?
What is your source of information?
Wow, what intellectualism. How much do these guys get paid?
When was NPR ever unbiased?
I think you and I basically disagree on the meaning of the constitution, I see no reason to continue this exchange as I am not interested in haggling over details. Neither of us is likely to change our view.
Except he's being disingenuous. They DO reverse conservative laws enacted by referenda or legislatures. So it's not their job to overrule the political process only when the bad law is liberal in effect? Another example: When some states recognized homo marriage, they forced it upon the rest on essentially federalism grounds, which for some reason, had ceased to apply by the time they revisited the issue and forced it upon the states that didn't legalize it. Seems like whatever doctrine leads to the liberal outcome, that's what applies.
That argument is totally invalid anyway. When I learned to drive, and I assume this is still the case, the financial responsibility requirement could be satisfied with insurance or posting a bond, IOW assuming the liability yourself if you could afford to do so. Obamacare criminalizes (or at least taxes) that option with regard to healthcare. They're lying. But they're liberals and their mouths are open, so we already knew that.
The homosexual marriage issue was a perfect case in point. The U.S. Supreme Court made the right decision in overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). It was a good law in terms of its objective, but was clearly unconstitutional (as many legal experts predicted when it was passed in the 1990s) because marriage law comes under the jurisdiction of individual states, not the Federal government.
The Supreme Court erred in the DOMA case in the remedy it imposed -- i.e., forcing every state to recognize homosexual "marriages." Instead, the USSC should have ruled the provisions of the Federal tax code that granted special financial benefits to married couples null and void. This would have been the proper application of a Federal power, and would have eliminated any need for the USSC to meddle in state laws.
ObamaCare is unconstitutional on any number of grounds, but not necessarily on the grounds that were the basis of that particular legal challenge. In fact, the USSC decision that recognized the constitutionality of the individual mandate also included an item -- namely, the finding that health care regulation is not a valid application of the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution -- that made it easier for litigants to challenge ObamaCare on other grounds. It's worth noting that no such challenges related to the unconstitutionality of health care regulation have showed up in the Federal courts.
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