They do now. In the House, all bills must include a “Constitutional Authority Statement.” That rule was instituted by the GOP when it took over the House, after the health care bill was passed, so it wasn’t required for that law.
Yes, that was the language I was thinking of. It’s rare, though, for Congress to do that. It did it specifically because of the debate over it at the time.
You seem to have needed one.
Laws enacted by the Congress have the presumption of Consitutionality, until SCOTUS says otherwise. So, for now, Obamacare is entirely constitutional.
O’Donnell’s partisanship isn’t really relevant here. He claims that the bill leaves the IRS no way to enforce the penalty. I’m not sure how that is pro Obama since that lack of enforcement capability is the result of concessions by the White House.
Obama wanted it to be enforceable. Saying that it isn’t is hardly pro Obama.
As far as being able to increase the tax; well sure, they can always increase, decrease, eliminate, or create new taxes. They could modify or even eliminate the entire PPACA. But those things would have to pass both houses and be signed by the President like anything else. We’re discussing the current penalty, not some theoretical possible larger enforceable one that would never happen given the current congress. There’s no foot in the door. The existence of a small penalty doesn’t somehow give congress the ability to bypass democracy and parliamentary procedure and just increase it on a whim.
It doesn’t have to wait. The law is in force unless and until a court settles the matter. It’s currently being appealed to the SCOTUS.
Any court, not just SCOTUS. A quibble.
That’s right. Congress did not pass Obamacare under their Constitutional ability to create and raise taxes. That’s a very important legal issue being decided by the USSC.
Can the federal government force you to buy a product? Can the federal government force people who were doing nothing to act in a certain way? What are the limiting principles on the federal government that prevents them from making you buy broccoli or anything else?
Several of the Justices question the limits of the government. The lawyers replys are at the “.pdf” file listed below. Do you think the Justices will will vote “for” or “against” an unlimited Congressional power to force you to buy everything or anything they tell you to?
*JUSTICE SCALIA: Could you define the market – everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: That, it seems to me, is – and it’s a passage in your reply brief that I didn’t quite grasp. It’s the same point. You say health insurance is not purchased for its own sake, like a car or broccoli; it is a means of financing health care consumption and covering universal risks. Well, a car or broccoli aren’t purchased for their own sake, either.
They’re purchased for the sake of transportation or, in broccoli, covering the need for food.
JUSTICE BREYER: All right. But all that sounds like you’re debating the merits of the bill. You asked really for limiting principles so we don’t get into a matter that I think has nothing to do with this case: broccoli. Okay?
And the limiting principles – you’ve heard three. First, the Solicitor General came up with a couple joined, very narrow ones. You’ve seen in Lopez this Court say that we cannot – Congress cannot get into purely local affairs, particularly where they are noncommercial. And, of course, the greatest limiting principle of all, which not too many accept, so I’m not going to emphasize that, is the limiting principle derived from the fact that members of Congress are elected from States and that 95 percent of the law of the United States is State law. That is a principle, though enforced by the legislature. The other two are principles, one written into Lopez and one you just heard.
It seems to me all of those eliminate the broccoli possibility, and none of them eliminates the possibility that we’re trying to take the 40 million people who do have the medical cost, who do affect interstate commerce, and provide a system that you may like or not like.*
Thank you all. I sit corrected. The issue will be settled tomorrow. (I hope.)
Actually, I think it’s even worse than that. Once we’ve established that congress can extract money from the populace via a mechanism like this—something that is not a tax—then the precedent is set for them to mandate we spend money on other things. All wonderful things, of course. Looking back at the arc ot taxation over the past hundred years or so we certainly should be able to see how things will go.
Also, Obama himself argued that it was NOT a tax.
[QUOTE=lance strongarm]
If this were a tax, it would be perfectly constitutional. They should have just made it a tax and be done with it, but that was politically infeasible.
It’s really not much of a distinction in the real world, of course, but unfortunately it matters legally.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly correct.
For the 5,000,000th time, it doesn’t matter a damn bit if Obama said it was a banana smoothie. Obama’s commentary is not part of the legislative history. He wasn’t in Congress when the bill was introduced, wasn’t in Congress when it was being debated, and wasn’t in Congress when it was passed.
The part of the legislation in question hasn’t gone into effect yet, so while technically it’s constitutional, it will never have had the chance to run free in the light before the USSC makes its ruling.
The comparison has never made sense to me. The government isn’t mandating companies provide people with broccoli. The government does mandate that hospitals provide life saving health care.
If, when I need broccoli, I can go to the store and by law they are required to provide it for me, then it would make sense.
Fortunately, all that matters for this discussion is that it is constitutional at this time.
tick tock
Three hours to go.
I don’t know why they chose broccoli as the example but it is what it is. The USSC is trying to decide if there are any limits on the government to force people to buy something that the people don’t want. In other words, COULD you be required to buy broccoli every time you went to the store BECAUSE Congress passed a law that says you must? Does the government have that power?
If the USSC decides that the Constitution does not limit the power of the government, then the mandate will be unheld.
If the USSC decides that the Constitution does limit the power of the government, then the mandate will be overturned.
Straw man, much? The issue isn’t whether the Constitution limits the power of the government. It’s whether it limits it at the point you want it to.
I would think that Obama, as a self-proclaimed Constitutional law professor, would know better than to claim that the government has unlimited power to force everyone to buy broccoli or healthcare insurance.
Mandate upheld.
First!
Apparently the USSC doesn’t agree with you. The USSC just struck down the individual mandate according to CNN.
ScotusBlog is saying the mandate has survived as a tax.