They were, though; as I’ve pointed out repeatedly, the legislative history is full of references to the mandate as a tax, on both sides.
The vote was assessing a penalty as it was called at the time. That’s what most people believed it was. The SCOTUS differed and called it a tax. Is this the first time a law was passed using one justification but eventually upheld using another? Circumstances change. There are politicians who run as one party, win, then change political affiliations for one reason or another. Should there be a redo because the voters weren’t voting for this new party and rather for the old?
Another thing to consider. Suppose we assume that Obama really did believe this was a penalty. He didn’t lie, he really believed it wasn’t a tax. The SCOTUS called it something else. Would a revote need to happen for that too?
Can you give an example of a law at the state or federal level in which the law was passed, then challenged and upheld using different criteria, and a revote was required?
Hey I know it sucks to be tricked, if that’s what really happened. But nothing about the law changes just because they call it something different
Its been discussed before. Here and on this Slate.com article. There was nothing misleading or arrogant about it. She might have said it inelegantly, but nobody’s accusing her of being Oscar Wilde.
I think that the 2 years of argument and discussion of the bill was more than enough time. The fact that only the final reconciled bill was this so-called rushed version doesn’t change the fact that the bill was up for anyone to read. Reconciliation changed a bit of it, do you think it would be proper to give time to reread a whole 2000+ page document if only a few pages were changed?
As far as how much time, I don’t know. I would say as much time as they usually get. This wasn’t put together in the dead of night and dropped into the mailbox 5 mins before business closed though. This was dissected and discussed for years. So no, I don’t think that you’re assumption is a fair one. Obama gave people plenty of time to read the bill. And let you forget, bills come from Congress. Obama didn’t write it and put it up on the White House blog or something, this was done by Congress.
I think it does matter how we wind up with new taxes. But I don’t think this is a “how” question. Rather, this is how taxes would be voted on anyways. A bill is drafted, amended, then voted on. It matters little how it was sold. As elected officials, as long as there was no deliberate prevention of people reading the bill, Pelosi, Reid, and Obama did what was necessary. If Republicans felt deceived, they should have read the bill better. That’s why I said “So what?”, because even to me, it seemed like a tax, but I didn’t care because I have no problems paying legitimate taxes.
What pages in the ACA have changed due to the SCOTUS ruling? Were the Supremes rewriting parts of the law before voting on it? Will they rewrite parts of it now that they’ve ruled it a tax?
Good question. To add another: What federal taxes exist that have no consequences if they are not paid?
I can think of any and it seems to me that if the ACA penalty is really a tax (as opposed to “may reasonably be characterized as a tax”, there should be something that happens to you if you fail to pay it to the IRS.
So it’s a tax. Big deal.
Don’t you see? It was all part of Obama’s cunning plan to label it as commerce, knowing full well that J. Roberts would come to his rescue and label it a tax, thereby retroactively lying about it being commerce. Or something.
You apparently haven’t read Roberts’ opinion very carefully. Here, as I have pointed out in another thread is the most relevant part with bolding added:
So, no, Roberts did not say it was a tax. He did not even say that the most natural interpretation is that it was a tax. He just said that it was “fairly possible” to interpret it as a tax and it turns out that, at least in his reading of the case law, that is all that is necessary to find it to be constitutional.
Call me crazy, but I think Roberts (and the justices who joined his opinion) know the Constitutional requirements for creating a tax.
If you don’t want to pay for health insurance, don’t have any income.
You have multiple errors here, once again.
(1) Roberts clearly explains the different standards that are applied in different cases. For the Anti-Injunction Act, the standard is a very strict one: it has to be specifically called a tax in the act. For the purposes of constitutionality, the standard is much weaker; it only has to be “fairly possible” to interpret it as a tax to pass constitutional muster . You may not like this but this is the way the law works…such distinctions are made all the time… and you can’t throw out a couple centuries of law and precedent and replace it by silly, simplistic arguments just because it gives you the result your conservative heart desires.
(2) If SCOTUS had found it was a tax for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act then in fact the mandate would have survived until such time (2014) as its constitutionality could legally be challenged.
To insure that they pay into the system and not be able to “free ride”. Same as anyone else. It would take time, effort, and money to force even a rich person, who decided he didn’t want to pay for emergency care, for instance, and for whatever reason, to pay up. A penalty gets rid of this need. In a federal republic such as we have here, why would you want to rich to be treated differently?
I have no idea if this is the case. I’m not saying it isn’t. But why do you feel this may be the case? And how much redistribution would actually take place since it is estimated that such a small percentage of the populace will be paying the penalty?
I didnt question whether it was law.
I asked why we have this piece of legal shit and someone pointed the finger at the red states.
I responded to the knee jerk blame conservatives meme. This is Obama’s baybee, not the Conservatives. Its a piece of rotting shit on a shingle.
Why could we not just look around the world, see what is working (Germany), and say, hey! Lets copy that one.
Instead, we get this cluster fuck
Let’s assume just for the sake of argument that everyone who voted for the law was completely fooled into believing this wasn’t a tax. When did it become the job of the Supreme Court to protect the populace from the constitutional stupidity of the legislature?
Because the conservatives wouldn’t agree to it.
Welcome to the legislative process! Support from moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats was needed to get the bill passed. That’s why it looks like it does. Those moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats did not want the kind of system that exists in Germany and would not have voted for it under any circumstances, so there was no way that was going to happen. That’s how compromise works, annoying as it can be. Obama supported this law because this was the only thing that could pass. He was heavily involved with it, but he did not write the law because presidents can’t submit laws to Congress. He acknowledged that if he were creating a health care system from scratch, this wouldn’t be it. That not being the case, he (and the Democrats who supported this law) worked with what already exists.
Also, the letter e does not appear anywhere in the word “baby.”
It’s not. But it is their job (I thought) to simply follow the rule of law. By the very language in the bill and the President’s guarantee and insistence that the mandate was not a tax, congress did not draft and vote on a new tax for the American people. Therefore, a new tax cannot be assessed.
You’ve been asked this several times, and if you’ve addressed this specifically, please point me to where you did so: what legal significance is there in what the President claim the mandate is (as opposed to purely political significance)? (I assume you’re claiming it has legal significance because of your “rule of law” statement - if I’m incorrect, please clarify what sort of significance you’re actually saying it has.)
I’d think you’d have more success with this argument concentrating on “the very language of the bill” (the very thing that our Congresscritters should be solely basing their decision on), rather than insisting that what Obama said in public has any weight that could be taken to a Senate chamber or courtroom.
So… the President tells Congress what to do?
Do you agree that the President can guarantee anything he wants in the media, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be so in the bills submitted by Congress (and not him)? If Obama tricked everyone and sold it through the media as a tax cut for everyone and free kittens for all, does that have any legal bearing on what the SCOTUS decides later? I still would like to know if, by the SCOTUS’s rule, any actual words in the ACA was changed, and if the SCOTUS itself was changing them. By your new avenue of debate, you seem to have given up on that, implying that you agreed the SCOTUS didn’t change anything.
However, your new words are puzzling. You essentially said that Obama tricked Congress into voting for it. Do you know if there is some provision in the Constitution which says that votes and laws can be invalidated if people claimed they were tricked? Would you support the creation of such a provision for all laws?
Obviously, my point is clear. If Congress was tricked, the vote still stands. If the SCOTUS declares that a bill sold as a non-tax was a tax, the vote in Congress still stands.
But this mandate just kicks the can down the road to the insurance company for collection. The hospital could have difficulty collecting from Bill Gates if he decides he doesn’t want to pay. Bill Gates certainly has the money to hire lawyers to make it difficult. But so does the insurance company. They could put up huge roadblocks as well.
The reality is many states allow a driver to post a cash deposit with the state in lieu of buying car insurance. Typically the deposit amount is the amount of the minimally legal liability limit if insurance was purchased. If a person has the money and thinks that putting down such a deposit is in his/her best interest he can do so.
So if I can deposit, say $30,000 and get a “guaranteed” return of whatever my liability insurance premium would have cost then I might come out ahead if I don’t get in an at-fault accident. This is particularly so for these low-interest-rate times.
So many conservatives screamed “SOCIALISM!” (rightly or wrongly) at the mere mention of this bill. Some still do. I think that scaremongering would have been much more effective if, instead of the the free rider justification, Congressional supporters just stood there and said we want to make you pay someone else’s medical bills.
No. Of course, I never said otherwise. You seemed to miss the “and” in my third sentence. My point would stand even if Obama had been mum on the subject. But, the President does frame the debate for the American people. And representatives cast their votes, in part, on how their constituents feel about it.