Congress gets OK
for 'evading democratic accountability', Obamacare ruling sets dangerous precedent for 'Senate
subversion' of Constitution, by Bob Unruh, 1/23/16, WND
Supreme Court decision
not to review the fact that although the U.S. Constitution requires tax bills
to be launched in the U.S. House, Obamacare, which raises an estimated $800
billion in taxes, was launched in the Senate, will mean trouble for the United
States, critics contend. Eventually.
“At issue was the
Constitution’s Origination Clause, which requires all new taxes to start in the
House, the chamber closest to the people. Obamacare is a massive tax bill, but
it was launched in the Senate through a procedural ploy,” said Timothy
Sandefur, the principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation. Pacific Legal is representing small-business
owner Matt Sissel.
“The Senate’s subversion
of the constitutionally mandated rules for tax bills is a danger not just in
this case but in future cases as well. By allowing Congress to use procedural
tricks to evade the constitutional rules, the court has opened the door to
Congress further evading democratic accountability for the laws it passes,”
Sandefur said.
The Supreme Court announced
this week it would not hear the arguments. The case called for the entire law
to be struck because of the unconstitutional origination. “It is very
disappointing that the court has chosen not to hear this important case,
because the justices were being asked to uphold and enforce an important
constitutional protection for all taxpayers,” Sandefur said.
PLF’s lawsuit focused on
Obamacare’s individual mandate, which requires Americans to buy a federally
prescribed insurance plan or pay what the Supreme Court in 2012 called “a tax
on going without health insurance.”
But according to
Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, it is just one of more than a dozen
revenue-related planks in Obamacare that collectively will impose more than
$800 billion in new taxes.
While Article I, Section
7 of the Constitution requires all bills for raising taxes to begin in the
House, Obamacare was launched when then-Majority Leader Harry Reid took the
number from an unrelated House bill and slapped it on Obamacare’s 2,700 pages.
Sissel said: “The battle
against Obamacare’s oppressive bureaucratic dictates will go on. Tens of
millions of Americans agree with me that we should have the freedom to make our
own health-care choices, and not be forced to purchase a federally dictated
healthcare plan.” The
Pacific Legal Foundation has
characterized Reid’s actions as a “shell” game.
A friend-of-the-court
brief filed by Michael Connelly of the United
States Justice Foundation and
Herb Titus and William Olson of William
J. Olson, P.C. charged that courts
have seemed to manipulate the law to accommodate the end goal of imposing
Obamacare on America.
For example, when
Obamacare was adopted, the White House authors of the tax-and-spend plan were
very specific: The billions of dollars in payments being demanded from
Americans were penalties, not taxes.
But the Supreme Court
said that as penalties, the required payments would be unconstitutional, so it
determine the payments are taxes. The White House quickly agreed.
Then the Supreme Court
took up the issue of whether or not subsidies should go only to taxpayers
enrolled in health insurance programs established by states.
The justices, however,
recognizing Obama’s signature law could collapse because most states wanted no
part of the deal, ruled “established by the state” includes exchanges
established by the federal government.
The Sissel case, arguing
that tax bills must originate with the body of lawmakers closest to voters,
cited former Chief Justice Marshall saying there is no “middle ground.” “The Constitution is
either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a
level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when
the legislature shall please to alter it,” he said.
Regarding the Obamacare
case, the brief explained, the judges who already have ruled in the case have
determined those constitutional requirements “may be altered at the sole
discretion of Congress by simply attributing to the bill some primary
nonrevenue purposes.” It explained, then, “Presto – the Origination Clause does
not apply.”
Interestingly, the brief
pointed out that like the Supreme Court’s assertion that the goal of Obamacare
is to change behavior regarding health insurance, “King George III averred that
the 1765 Stamp Act had a nonrevenue purpose in that it would not only raise
money, but would ‘unite the interests of the most distant possessions of the
crown, and to encourage and secure their commerce with Great Britain.'”
Argued the brief: “Since
the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in March 2010, various reviewing
courts have labored in order to save it from a finding of constitutional
infirmity. In doing so, they have fashioned several creative legal rationales
to support the ACA which have caused many to question these decisions as
outcome-driven.”
http://www.wnd.com/2016/01/congress-okd-to-be-evading-democratic-accountability/
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