His father put him a corner once.ONCE!
Well, we’ve gone in circles on that point. I don’t think that’s at all a reasonable reading of that section, much less so obvious and clear that it is unreasonable for the IRS to read the section as endorsing subsidies.
I don’t think there’s much more to say on that point. Though I would reiterate my question to you about whether Congress had ever previously laid such a detailed foundation for future lawmaking–that at the time would be a complete time-waster for all involved–instead of just making appropriate changes if that future law ever passed. I’m not aware of that ever having happened, and I very much doubt it has. It doesn’t make any sense.
You are pointing to other words that might mean one thing and might mean something else, and stacking up against words that mean only one thing.
It prevents them from being state exchange customers. And the federal exchange has the flexibility to accept incarcerated persons. Maybe the feds will decide Sheriff Arapio isn’t providing decent care and use the federal exchange to help out. Makes perfect sense.
No – but part of the raison d’etre is that EVERYONE was eligible, as opposed to the mean old pre-ACA days when you had to grovel and beg to be eligible. The “vague” threat was the prior status quo.
And I think it’s a perfectly reasonable reading.
No – but this law is ground-breaking in many ways. Congress never before mandated that the general run of mankind purchase a product, but that’s the intent here anyway. How do I know?
'Cause that’s what it says.
If the Court rules against my view, I will abjectly apologize for being wrong, and acknowledge that the correct reading of the law accounts for the unexpressed but evident intent.
If the Court rules for my view, I will expect that you
No, I’m not. What is ambiguous about the reference to incarcerated individuals not being qualified individuals, for example?
How does it prevent them from being state exchange customers but not federal exchange customers?
And are you being serious here? Or was that last part tongue-in-cheek? I honestly can’t tell.
So you agree that your view is that this section is just providing special protection to non-incarcerated U.S. citizens and lawful residents, just in case the feds decided only to open the exchange to illegal immigrants and convicts?
I’ll probably do what I did last time the Supreme Court validated my legal view over yours, in the case of preemption on the Arizona immigration law. Here’s my wild crowing when that happened, in full:
Well… you may recall I was not exactly touting preemption as a slam-dunk; I think I said at the time that preemption was “wrong but tenable.”
Had the Court in that case handed down some EP bullshit, THEN I would have worn the hairshirt.
So that case is a better call of yours, no question – but I did not oppose your view with any kind of ferocity.
I’m more curious what you’ll say if the Supremes go the way the DC Circuit panel did.
[Moderating]
Telling other posters they should die is a violation of board rules. Don’t do this again.
[/Moderating]
I’ll be surprised, but not very shocked. Perhaps the same as you were in the Arizona case. As I said upthread, I’d put the odds at 60% for Halbig et al. losing.
I’ll be more shocked if the Supreme Court just endorses all of Griffith’s reasoning, which I think was quite poor. I would expect a more well-reasoned opinion out of Roberts or Kennedy. Instead of coming up with what are, in my view, wildly nonsensical readings of the “qualified individuals” section and other sections, I would expect the Supreme Court opinion to just say that none of those other sections is clear enough to trump the plain language of the subsidy calculation. And I would also be more shocked if the Supreme Court endorsed the “incentives” view of the purpose of that provision. Finally, I would be more shocked if a majority opinion for Halbig won more than five votes. Those things would very much surprise me.
Additionally, I simply don’t regard the question here to be the one you think it is. In my view, the question is whether this statute is ambiguous (in either direction) and if so whether the IRS view is reasonable. I don’t think either side is arguing, as you put it, for enforcing the law’s “unexpressed but evident intent” over it’s plain meaning. So I certainly don’t expect any opinion from the Supreme Court to endorse that view, which I think is legally untenable.
If we simplify things to three possible supreme court rulings:
(1) no subsidies for federal exchanges (ie, you win)
(2) subsidies for federal exchanges are up to the IRS and the executive branch
(3) always subsidies for federal exchanges
None of those three outcomes strikes me as outrageous or impossible, given my fragmentary knowledge of the situation and my limited knowledge of law. The thing I object to in this thread is YOUR position that (1) is CLEARLY and OBVIOUSLY the only correct ruling, and anyone who disagrees just believes in using handwaving pleas for social justice instead of respect for the law, yada yada yada.
So to answer your question, if the supreme court issues a ruling which is very clearly (2), and a Republican wins in 2016, and orders the IRS to stop providing subsidies for federal exchanges, well, I will acknowledge that it’s legal for that president to do so. However, I will view it as an evil and unethical action, barring some seriously mitigating circumstances.
I don’t know if it’s always an easy line to draw, but it seems easy for me in this particular case. YMMV.
You’ve suggested a case of an obvious mistake in language. But how about this case:
Suppose a legislature passes some law involving auto safety or traffic rules, and autos are specifically defined as 4 wheeled machines etc. (Motorcycles are not mentioned or excluded.) And then motorcycles become more common and a regulatory agency announces that their interpretation is that the law also applies to motorcycles as well. And the logic is that the rationale behind the law applies every bit as much to motorcycles as it does to cars, and based on the stated intentions of the law’s writers and signers there’s no conceivable reason for them to have excluded motorcycles. So they probably just lifted the language involving autos from some other law or section of this law but really meant to include motorcycles as well. Do you buy it?
One reason this is a sensitive issue is that there has been a lot of what I would consider abuse in this area.
[And one reason it’s more of an issue for conservatives is because - and perhaps I’m biased here - it seems to me that liberal judges are more apt to view the text of the law as giving them expansive powers to act in accordance with what they consider the spirit of the law. (One particular example that sticks in my head is the Florida Supreme Court’s rulings on the Bush vs Gore case.) So that conservatives always have to win twice - first win legislatively, and then win in court - while liberals only need to win either in the legislature or in the courts. (Now, with Obama having effectively seized significant legislative power for himself, the deck is even more stacked.) I’m aware that conservative judges have sometimes overturned liberal laws but ISTM that this tends to be less likely than the reverse, FWIW, and this also seems to be supported by liberal legal philosophies as expressed in this thread and elsewhere, e.g. CLS. Again, YMMV.]
But that’s not a good analogy either, unless you have a law which, while being drafted, started out talking about cars, and then had a bunch of stuff added on about motorcycles, and in some parts of the law appears to want to treat motorcycles and cars identically, but in a few key provisions has language that only specifically mentions cars. In a case like that, I don’t think it takes judicial activism or soft-headed liberal thinking to interpret the law as intending to apply equally to cars and motorcycles all over.
I don’t mind if you disagree with me about ACA as long as you don’t think that the only reason anyone could possibly disagree with you is because of partisan blindness.
I certainly do NOT agree with that in the slightest, but that’s a topic for another thread.
I’ll take those 1000:1 odds that your assertion (helpfully bolded by me) is incorrect. I’ll bet you $1000 at those odds that you’re wrong.
Bo, you might want to establish that you and Bricker define “odds” the same way. His usage looks a tad eccentric.
No. Where did I ever offer 1000:1 on that prediction?
I see… a little creative editing on your part. You cut out the prior sentence:
Much like Congress, my intent can be divined by what I say.
I’m giving 1000:1 odds on the outcome of the DC Circuit’s panel ruling. (Yes – the one we already know about).
When it comes to the future events:
Why didn’t you quote those lines, Snowboarder?
I’m still unclear how it is reasonable to argue that a law, the purpose of which is to make health care insurance affordable for all Americans, must be interpreted to read that said insurance should not be made affordable for all Americans.
I agree that my example was more straightforward than this one. But I think it’s fundamentally more similar to this case than your case with the apples, in which it’s just a language error, and I was using it to illustrate the principle.
In general the only reason anyone ever disagrees with me about anything is because of partisan blindness. If my wife disagrees with me about which end to squeeze the toothpaste tube from it’s because of partisan blindness on her part. But I don’t think this is relevant here.
As I noted earlier (post #461) “I am not a legal scholar so I don’t know what the legal approach is in such cases. But I would personally prefer that laws were required to be executed as actually written and passed, and not as the framers and signers would have written it had they thought more about it.” My comments here are not about how a judge should rule in this specific case. That depends on what the accepted approach is in comparable cases WRT non-partisan issues, and I don’t know. My focus - to the extent that I’m advocating anything - is about what I think the proper role of non-elected judges should be in interpreting versus creating law, in cases which are comparable to this one as regards to the legal facts.
Because Obama is black.
Because the law makes an effort to define, specifically and in detail, just precisely how it goes about making insurance available to all Americans. And one of those precise definitions allows subsidies to state exchanges, but none of them allow subsidies to federal exchanges.
Tell me something, sciurophobic. How did you feel about the Hobby Lobby decision?
I ask because the purpose of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was to guarantee its application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened. The law says that, explicitly. Federal law also says the chapter about religious freedom should be “… construed in favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the Constitution.”
How did you think the Hobby Lobby case should have been decided?