Tuesday, September 03, 2013
In Obamacare, a tax is now a "shared responsibility payment"
Meanwhile, the IRS issued final rules this week regarding the individual mandate. The rules define what constitutes minimum essential coverage, the level of responsibility individuals hold for family members, and how the mandate applies to employees on union-sponsored plans and in other unique employment situations.
Interestingly, the agency, which will be responsible for making sure people comply with the new insurance rules, was careful to avoid the word "tax" when describing the penalty people face for not maintaining minimum coverage. The new euphemism of choice is "shared responsibility payment."
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ruled in 2012 that the individual mandate was constitutional only if it was in fact a tax. But that's a politically inconvenient word and it disproves Barack Obama's claim that he isn't raising taxes on the middle class. So, "shared responsibility payment" it is.
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9 comments:
NewSpeak at its best. Orwell was truly a prophet.
Those of us who did not vote for him are also stuck with the evil consequences !
More like shared misery!
One of the Left's oldest tricks when they're trying to shove something down the throats of the people that the people don't want, is to simply give it a more palatable name. In the end, it's still socialized medicine.
Those of us who did not vote for Bush are also stuck with the evil consequences !
4:10: You mean the booming economy, 5.5% unemployment, AAA credit rating and terrorist on the run, half the debt, 1/3 the deficit and a president the world respected/feared?
That "evil consequences?"
@4:23 I guess you were in hibernation when Bush left office.
Many who opposed ObamaCare as a concept had hung their hopes upon a Supreme Court decision that ruled the "mandate" to be unconstitutional. Remember that in his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts had stated that the Supreme Court should not be "activist", and this he went on to explain meant that the Supreme Court should look for a way (a valid way) to find an act of Congress passed by both houses, and signed into law by the President, to be constitutional and that it should not declare such a law to be "unconstitutional" unless no reasonable constitutional justification could be found to exist. A non-activist court would not seek to substitute it's "wisdom" as superior to that of the legislative and executive branches. He was right in that this should be the stance of the Supreme Court, whatever the party or political philosophy of the executive or that is dominant in the legislature. He stated that it was not the role of the Court to protect the people from the improvident or unwise actions of their legislators, and he was right in this also.
And how did he decide the mandate, backed by the penalty was constitutional? He declared it to be a tax, and therefore within the broad taxing powers of Congress - he did not find that it was constitutional based upon the claim of Congress's nebulous and frequently over-reached right to "regulate" interstate commerce, and in fact led the Court in reject this legal theory in the Court's ruling.
How did the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, also referred to as ObamaCare) originate? It originated as a Senate Bill passed by the Senate in the dark of night without debate or amendment, and was sent to the House which voted to accept, word for faulty word, the Senate version and passed it. This was done because the make-up of the Senate had changed due to a special election, and had a different version been passed in the House, the two different versions would have had to go to a conference committee, and then would have required another vote in the Senate and the House. The H.R. did not want to have to go on record for this a second time, and on a second vote it would not have passed in the Senate, as a filibuster could have been sustained by the Republicans due to the results of the intervening special election.
Why is this important? A tax raises revenue. The Constitution requires that all tax and revenue bills must originate in the House of Representatives. But this constitutional issue is one that the Court could not at that time address, due to a law which prevents a challenge to a tax law until the tax has been levied and collected. Therefore, Chief Justice Roberts lead the Court to declare, to rule, that the "mandate penalty" is legally a tax, but the origin of the law in the Senate means that when this issue becomes "ripe" (i.e., someone has had the penalty tax levied against them, paid it, and challenged it in the courts) the law will on its face be found unconstitutional. Chief Justice Roberts was neither hoodwinked nor duplicitous; rather, he maneuvered the Court into a ruling that guarantees the law will fall in a later challenge to the constitutionality of its origin. Patience in all things - this also will come to pass, and the wrong that appears before us at this time will be righted.
his actions are non-plus good
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