Once again, the House GO is threatening to shut down the US if it doesn’t get its way. This time its healthcare.
Suppose they get their wish and the Federal Government stops paying its bills.
In the ensuing global meltdown, there is going to be calls for the US to do whatever it needs to, but pay its bills.
At what point could the SCOTUS find a way to re-write the Constitution so as to eliminate the House’s involvement in creating and enacting the budget?
No, I think the bozos will eventually blink and the debt will be serviced, but, as an intellectual exercise, would it be possible to eliminate the role of either the House or the Senate in formulating some or all of the law-making process?
Could the SCOTUS find that a Constitutional Amendment valid, even though it did not pass the body it seeks to gut?
No, the Supreme Court can’t re-write the Constitution. They wouldn’t even try.
What they could do is decline to rule on a cqase where the President does some of those things. Say the President issues an Executive Order telling administration workers to keep paying the bills, even though Congress has not appropriated money for this in a budget. That is, I think, unconstitutional and could be challenged. But the Supreme Court could decline to rule on the case when it reaches them. That could allow the President to keep the bills paid via Executive Orders.
If that happened - and I say this as dyed-in-the-wool liberal and lifelong Democrat - then it’s time to overthrow the government. The Republican party is a bunch of self-destructive yutzes, but you’re talking about outright tyranny. That’s a much worse than the Republican’s current bullshit, even if I’m (temporarily) the beneficiary of it.
Miller: Well, no, not quite yet. There is still t-bonham@scc.net’s suggestion: the President simply directs the Treasury to pay the bills. The Republicans impeach him. He laughs it off, and the Senate acquits. The Supreme Court, exercising remarkable tact, refuses to hear the case.
It would be a kind of overthrow of the government: it would establish that the President has more power than anyone ever thought before. It would be a shift in the balance between the branches.
And “our side” would rue the hell out of it, the next time a Republican becomes President. So this is a big part of why it shouldn’t happen.
(I hate the Filibuster, too… But since I want my side to use it when the other guys are in the majority, I accept the inconvenience.)
I’m afraid the saddest implication of this would be that every President, from now on till forever, will be impeached, purely as a matter of form. It will happen in sync with major elections, and will only further radicalize the country.
Besides, suppose you do a real overthrow. Who rules then? A junta of Generals? We’d make Egypt look good in comparison!
The Supreme Court doesn’t “hear the the case” in an impeachment. The Chief Justice presides over the “trial” in the Senate. So, if the Senate acquits, any role the SCOTUS plays is already done.
If Congress was trying to push a constitutional amendment and went to the Supreme Court to bypass one chamber of Congress’ involvement and it somehow passed and was enacted as law. I’m pretty sure at least 75% of America (whichever half is in the other party at the time as well as half of the party that’s trying this shenanigan) would rise up and probably reduce DC to a wasteland in short order.
No matter WHO tried this, I would be right there with them. I have no guns, but I can be fairly threatening with the lighter app on my iPhone.
Nobody, apart from Obama’s disciples wants the “Affordable” Care Act. It’s now over 20,000 pages of regulations that nobody can be expected to understand. It does not do what was promised. It’s a top down bureaucratic mess that increases cost and puts us deeper in debt despite the president’s proclamations to the contrary. Labor unions, who pushed for the damned thing are now crying and begging to be exempted. Federal employees don’t want it, nobody wants the damned thing except Obama’s drones and communists who believe in the triumph of the state over the individual. Working, taxpaying Americans don’t want this damn thing.
And little Johnny Boehner got the word.
We had to drag him kicking and screaming, and Boehner has realized that putting up an actual fight is in his best interest. He knows that he will be shot in the back by those of us who demanded this soviet-style legislation be defunded if he surrenders.
Good luck, John, you spineless crybaby, back down and you’re name is on the bill.
If only there was somehow a way to put this to a national referendum - some kind of nationwide vote between two candidates, one of whom supports the ACA and one who doesn’t. Then, the results of such a “presidential election” would indicate what the majority of people prefer.
Romney was a weak candidate, who due to the Massachusetts healthcare law was unable to provide a genuine critique of ACA. Also, fuck him.
Then there’s the case of the quickly upcoming midterms. If Obama wants to salvage what’s left of his broken presidency he’ll man up, admit his healthcare bill wasn’t the “big fucking deal” Joe Biden said it was, scrap it, and pass something that actually cuts costs, doesn’t use the IRS as the enforcement mechanism, doesn’t keep private health records of every man, woman, child & other who lives in this country and isn’t tens of thousands of pages long. But he’s not going to do that is he. No his ego is too big. If he doesn’t man up and play nice the weak kneed republicans and the democrats will pay for it.
He’s already a lame duck. I predict after the midterms his presidency will be a dying duck lying in filth with a broken neck.
I’m really not making fun of you, DJ Motorbike, that’s really not my intent. But the PPACA isn’t going away. Nothing on Earth will make that happen. One of the reasons things have been built to a fever pitch right now is that once it begins being implemented and people start functioning under it - and the smart boys start figuring out how to make a profit off it - it’ll be as locked in as social security of medicare. The only way it goes away then is if it’s replaced by something more inclusive.
And did you really just use the word ‘soviet’? There should be a moratorium on that word in debate.
Honestly, I don’t find a whole lot of love for the Affordable Care Act. The best articles I usually see are “It’s not as bad as we thought it was going to be!”
Medicare reimburses doctors at rates below what treating them actually costs in many cases, especially in the specialty fields. Doctors are leaving the practice of medicare/medicaid servicing because of it (and have had a slow exodus for probably 10-15 years).
Insurance companies base their payment structures on the Medicare payouts and they are also the primary advocates and drivers of Pay for Performance, which further increases doctor costs. It kinda sucks.
Now that everyone (or the government) is going to pay for insurance, surely that would make things better right? Well, no. The doctors aren’t getting that extra money, the insurance companies are. And they are raising their rates because “it costs money to care for people” when the actual issue is that they are trying to maintain a return on investment for their shareholders instead of trying to reduce costs for consummers.
So, costs are going to go up for us, doctors aren’t going to get paid more, and the impending primary care doctor shortage will cause a significant amount of trouble for everyone involved.
Our medical system wasn’t awesome, but this basically coded that sucky system directly into the law books and forces everyone to suffer equally. That’s not really a step forward in my opinion.
Yes, I know it will never go away. That’s the problem. That’s why there is a final push to de-implement it. Furthermore there already is a more inclusive bill that could be passed which would immediately reduce health-care costs rather than increase. ACA is such a terrible bill I can’t understand why anyone thinks its a good idea, it’s so obviously not good legislation.
Why did Obama delay the employer mandate if it’s such great legislation?
Why have the labor unions come out against it?
What is so great about it that it can’t be undone right now? Because it still can. I know it’s unlikely, but I can’t sit back and let it happen without saying that I did everything I could to stop it.
After it’s (likely) enacted I will not stop. Neither will millions of other freedom loving americans.
Remember, it’s not John Boehner doing this. It’s due to a grass roots effort. He’s being forced. And if he doesn’t come through and is able to say that he did everything he could to stop it there’s going to be hell to pay.
When Boehner isn’t far enough to the right for you, it’s time to stop suckling at the RNC teat and start your own political party like a real man rather calling yourself the Tea Party and basically being nothing more than an evil poltergeist that needs to be exorcised.
It’s nice to see the crazy finally getting the air play it deserves but I don’t think it’s fair that the whole GOP gets painted with that brush. Let’s split them off into the psych ward where they belong so they can be dealt with appropriately. Then at least the more rational elements of the party won’t be held hostage and might not feel that they need to go along with the batshit elements like Cruz and the soon to be forgotten Bachmann.
If everybody hates Obamacare, then why can’t you guys pass legislation that repeals it? Obviously because the Democrats control the Senate and won’t pass such legislation, and also Obama will veto it.
So where does that put you? You’ve got a Republican majority in the house. The house passes all spending bills. So you can either vote to spend the money the House voted to spend when it approved the law in 2010, or you can shut down the government in an attempt to–well, what exactly do you expect will happen?
You can’t repeal Obamacare by defunding it. You can refuse to pass a budget that funds Obamacare, but so what? Why would Obama sign such a budget? What does he get by negotiating? Nothing.
So the idea that the House Republicans can shut down the government until Obama blinks is nonsense. He ain’t gonna blink. The Republicans can either pass a budget that Obama will sign, or not. Their choice.
The problem that the Republicans are facing is that they don’t understand their enemy. They have created a caricature for the purpose of stirring up their base, the problem is that the base believes the caricature, and Republican officials have to pretend to believe it too, if they don’t want to get shot in the back by their own troops.
And so we see that the Republicans are in an impossible situation that they can’t possibly win, and yet they can’t back down from.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. The case I think the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear is a suit against the President for paying the nation’s bills, if he decides to do that unilaterally. It would be too sticky an issue for them to get involved in. I was agreeing with t-bonham@scc.net who said the same thing.
However, one question I do have: suppose they impeach Obama. Can the Senate majority bypass the formality of a trial by a simple motion to dismiss the charges? If there’s a test vote, and it obviously shows that the votes aren’t there for conviction, would the presiding judge (Roberts) shrug and say “Case dismissed?” Or is it absolutely unavoidable that they go through the whole farce and rigamarole, even when the outcome is obvious?