The Obamacare "Tax" That Chief Justice Roberts Invented Is Still Unconstitutional

[Bigun]

The Obamacare "Tax" That Chief Justice Roberts Invented Is Still Unconstitutional

Ilya Shapiro

As we all know, two years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts changed the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate into a tax and thus rescued President Obama’s signature legislation. What you may not know is that with this slight of hand—or flick of the wrist—he actually sent Obamacare flying from the constitutional frying pan into the constitutional fire.

That is, if you accept the Great Alchemist’s transmogrification of a penalty-enforced regulation into a mere tax on the condition of not owning health insurance—in other words, a “unicorn tax,” a creature of no known provenance that will never be seen again—if you accept that, you torque up the ACA’s constitutional tension vis-à-vis the Origination Clause.

Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 says: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” This clause was put in to ensure that that most awesome federal power was lodged in the political body most sensitive to public opinion.

“The power to tax is the power to destroy,” John Marshall wrote in the foundational 1819 case of McCulloch v. Maryland, so the Framers wanted to ensure that any such destruction came from the people themselves...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyashapiro/2014/05/12/the-obamacare-tax-that-chief-justice-roberts-invented-is-still-unconstitutional/?fbclid=IwAR35DTPBKpcGYGbm9RnAiqqqpeQVjsCutZvk2BM-qnUHfPyMTCDc1jyStH8#68dd44fb22b7

[Bigun]

Yes indeed Mr. Shapiro!  Yes indeed!

[jmyrlefuller]

First off, the tax was repealed two years ago, and second, this article is from 2014. What good is it to post it now?

[Smokin Joe]

I have been decrying the ruling on this point for years, not to mention that it is the business of the court to rule on the Law, NOT to write (or rewrite) it.

After having been clearly told countless times by the architects of that abomination that the penalty wasn't a tax, Roberts had to rewrite the law against the express claims of its artificers in order to call it Constitutional.

[Bill Cipher]

The butt-hurt is still palpable these many years later?   How utterly pathetic.  So, according to the Solomons here, it’s not a tax if Congress gives it some other label.

Gee, I wonder why Congress didn’t think of that in 1895.  Just think, instead of having to amend the Constitution to add the 16th Amendment, Congress could have just enacted an “income mandate” instead of an “income tax” and - if the Solomons here are correct - it would have passed muster in 1895 because it wasn’t a tax, simply because Congress used a different label.

[Smokin Joe]

The butt-hurt is still palpable these many years later?   How utterly pathetic.  So, according to the Solomons here, it’s not a tax if Congress gives it some other label.

Gee, I wonder why Congress didn’t think of that in 1895.  Just think, instead of having to amend the Constitution to add the 16th Amendment, Congress could have just enacted an “income mandate” instead of an “income tax” and - if the Solomons here are correct - it would have passed muster in 1895 because it wasn’t a tax, simply because Congress used a different label.

Wow. Genius. Not.

The mandate was written in with a penalty. You can't penalize people for breathing, for simply being alive, that's a fundamental Right. But they can pass a law requiring whatever, and penalize people who don't comply with the law. Hence, a penalty.

The pushers of Obamacare repeatedly said it wasn't a "tax" on breathing, but a penalty for not complying with an insurance requirement mandated by Congress. A go-zillion times we heard it wasn't a "tax".
Along comes Roberts and decides it is a tax, even though it did not originate as revenue measures are Constitutionally required to, in the House of Representatives, and rewrote the law to make the penalty a tax.

It is an incorrect ruling on so many levels it's gobsmacking.
I, for one, lost my health insurance coverage as a result of Obamacare's passage and being upheld by the ruling at SCOTUS. My insurer simply stopped writing and renewing policies.  The exchanges would have cost a minimum of 28,000 for a family of 4 in this state, with a 14K deductible. That was cost prohibitive. (Previous costs for high deductible insurance were about 6K a year, plus the deductibles and co pays if we needed it.)  The penalty/tax was cheaper than the 'cure'.
Thank God we're healthy.