"Obamacare will be the killing blow to those Democrats and perhaps even to Barack Obama in the 2012 elections.....----- Wake up America, November 2010Two days ago Obamacare hit the front page news once again when it was reported that the Supreme Court agreed to hear constitutionality challenges against Obama and Democrats' Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare.
From the time of passage through today there have been multiple problems associated with Obama and the Democrats healthcare law most recently highlighted being the Obama administration having to indefinitely suspend a key portion of their healthcare law called the CLASS Act which was Obamacare’s long-term care insurance plan because it was "flawed, unsustainable, and unable to go forward."
Also highlighted recently is the fact that the Obama administration has been forced to issue over 1,800 waivers for companies to avoid the consequences of Obamacare for members and employees.
Today, Wall Street Journal highlights yet another "legal mistake" regarding Obamacare made by Congress and Obama by signing the bill.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act offers "premium assistance"—tax credits and subsidies—to households purchasing coverage through new health-insurance exchanges. This assistance was designed to hide a portion of the law's cost to individuals by reducing the premium hikes that individuals will face after ObamaCare goes into effect in 2014. (If consumers face the law's full cost, support for repeal will grow.)
The law encourages states to create health-insurance exchanges, but it permits Washington to create them if states decline. So far, only 17 states have passed legislation to create an exchange.
This is where the glitch comes in: ObamaCare authorizes premium assistance in state-run exchanges (Section 1311) but not federal ones (Section 1321). In other words, states that refuse to create an exchange can block much of ObamaCare's spending and practically force Congress to reopen the law for revisions.
The Obama administration wants to avoid that legislative debacle, so this summer it proposed an IRS rule to offer premium assistance in all exchanges "whether established under section 1311 or 1321." On Nov. 17 the IRS will hold a public hearing on that proposal. According to a Treasury Department spokeswoman, the administration is "confident" that offering premium assistance where Congress has not authorized it "is consistent with the intent of the law and our ability to interpret and implement it."
Such confidence is misplaced. The text of the law is perfectly clear. And without congressional authorization, the IRS lacks the power to dispense tax credits or spend money.
Nancy Pelosi was right when she said "we have to pass the health care bill so that you can find out what is in it."
For over a year we have been finding out what is in it and the majority of Americans are unimpressed, still opposed and the plurality still wants it repealed.
Then there is another issue headlining today and that is Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's refusal to recuse herself from the cases the Supreme Court just agreed to hear in March which should see a judgment rendered by June, keeping the issue in the forefront for the 2012 presidential election.
IBD explains:
Here are the facts on Kagan: She was the administration's solicitor general when ObamaCare became law last year. She has acknowledged that she was at a meeting in which state litigation against ObamaCare was discussed, though she said she was not involved in any legal responses concerning the states' litigation.
We also know that Kagan enthusiastically supported ObamaCare. This is made clear in emails released last week by the Justice Department.
"I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing," Kagan wrote on the day ObamaCare passed the House in an email to Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who was working at that time in the Obama Justice Department.
You can read the entire exchange, here.
Aaron Worthing over at Paterico's Pontifications has an excellent expansion on the IBD's editorial piece and explains more of what Kagan was responsible for when she was Obama's Solicitor General.
More significantly than that, Kagan has claimed that she was not part of the process of planning the Obama administration’s legal strategy. First, that is a remarkable position for her to take, given that she was Solicitor General at the time. The Solicitor General is the President’s lawyer before the Supreme Court. She is literally the person who typically personally argues before the bench. Now, that does make her into an appellate lawyer only, but still, I don’t know a single appellate lawyer who doesn’t prefer to have some input into how the trials are handled.
Read the entire piece over there because it contains further evidence of Kagan's direct involvement.
Kagan's refusal to recuse herself from the hearings on Obamacare threatens the integrity of the Supreme Court.
Whoever the Republicans choose to nominate to be the candidate to run against Obama should relentlessly use Obamacare against Barack Obama in 2012. No matter what the Supreme Court ultimately rules, the very fact that Obamacare was passed and signed into law by Barack Obama against the opposition of the majority of Americans, can, should and will be held against him in 2012.
It would be poetic justice if Obama's "signature accomplishment" be used as the killing blow against his reelection.
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