A 21 second trip down memory lane to when Barack Obama pledged to "Never to Raise Taxes on Anyone Making Less Than 250 000 a Year."
[WATCH]
Obama also said that before he was elected here, and here. It was a consistent promise before and after he was elected.
Now, fast forward to 2012 and watch as WSJ economist Stephen Moore explains that 75% of Obamacare costs will hit Americans making less than $120,000 a year.
I love Sarah and I am so glad she did not run for President in 2012 because then she would have had to limit her comments to be somewhat politically correct. As it is, she is able to just call it as she sees it.
Watch Sarah Palin on Sean Hannity's show where she says "Nancy Pelosi is a dingbat," and a perfect spokesperson for Obama's Democrat party.
According to an Obama surrogate, if you are middle-class, earn enough income to have to file your taxes with IRS but not enough to pay health insurance premiums on top of your other necessities, you are a "freeloader".
A top surrogate for President Obama insisted Friday that the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act was not a tax — despite the fact that the Supreme Court narrowly preserved the law on those grounds.
"Don't believe the hype that the other side is selling," Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told reporters on a conference call.
"This is a penalty," Patrick said. "It's about dealing with the freeloaders."
“I just want to respond to the, frankly, bizarre attack, which is the claim this act represents a big tax increase on the middle class,” Patrick said. “First, this is a penalty. It’s about dealing with the freeloaders — the folks who now get their care without insurance in high-cost emergency room setting. And all the rest of us pay for it today.”
Putting aside the fact that the Supreme Court has just legally defined the individual mandate as a tax, which according to the court ruling, does not apply to those who do not make enough to require filing their income to IRS, but does apply to anyone who does earn enough to require them to file and Patrick's direct lie about it not being a tax, we are left with his "freeloader" comment.
The exaction the Affordable Care Act imposes on those without health insurance
looks like a tax in many respects. The “[s]hared responsibility
payment,” as the statute entitles it, is paid into the Treasury by
“taxpayer[s]” when they file their tax returns. 26 U. S. C. §5000A(b). It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. §5000A(e)(2).
The individual mandate, according to the portion of the opinion above, doesn't apply to those who do not pay federal income tax. That much is clear.
So, if you are a middle class individual or family, make enough to pay federal income taxes but are battling week by week to pay your bills such as rent, food, gas, utilities and there is not any left over to pay out the high price of health care insurance, you are a freeloader by not doing so and yeah, hey, you are going to have to pay an Obama tax to boot because of the individual mandate!!!
Now just imagine the reaction from liberals had a Mitt Romney surrogate said something like that.
FactCheck.org says Obama "fails to back up its claims that Romney 'shipped jobs' overseas."
Summary below but the whole piece is worth reading:
Obama accuses Romney in a series of TV ads of being a “corporate
raider” who “shipped jobs to China and Mexico,” asking if voters want to
elect an “outsourcer in chief.” But some of the claims in the ads are
untrue, and others are thinly supported.
Bain Capital, the venture capital firm founded by Romney in 1984, is
the focus of the Obama campaign’s attacks. There is no question that
Bain invested in some companies that helped other companies outsource
work and that some of that work went overseas. That was the core
business for Modus Media and SMTC Corp. — two outsource companies
featured in a June 21 article in the Washington Post that has
been the basis of recent Obama TV ads. Bain also invested in U.S.-based
companies that sold goods manufactured here and abroad, and some of
those companies closed U.S. facilities and eliminated U.S. jobs.
But after reviewing numerous corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission, contemporary news accounts, company histories and press releases, and the
evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, we found no
evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running
Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas.
One TV ad, called “Come and Go,” claims that Romney “shipped jobs to
China and Mexico.” But two examples cited by the Obama campaign
occurred after Romney left Bain. There’s no clear evidence that a third
company shipped jobs to China under Romney.
A second ad called “Revealed” mocks Romney’s tough talk about
cracking down on China’s trade practices by saying “all he’s ever done
is send them our jobs” and citing the Washington Post article. But the newspaper article contained no examples of U.S. jobs being shipped to China while Romney was working at Bain.
The “Come and Go” ad casts Romney as a “corporate raider,” but that
term, loaded with negative connotations, is simply inaccurate. Bain
didn’t engage in hostile takeovers when Romney was at the helm.
That ad also repeats the claim that as governor of Massachusetts,
Romney was “outsourcing state jobs to India.” But it wasn’t the state
that outsourced contracts. Rather, Romney vetoed a measure that would
have prevented the state from doing business with a state contractor
that was locating state customer-service calls in India.
Go read the full analysis to see how Barack Obama is still attempting to win reelection with outright lies.
On Thursday, June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court handed down their decision on Obamacare and upheld the individual mandate by legally defining it as a tax, making it the largest tax for the middle-class in history.
(See Comprehensive List Of Obamacare Tax Hikes With Effective Dates- HERE)
Obama officials and surrogates are still lying about the tax and insisting it is just a penalty, not a tax, despitethe final arbiter, the Supreme Court, putting the question to bed, so to speak.
(Below the Obama campaign and surrogates denials and the video of Obama vehemently denying that the individual mandate is not a tax in 2009, will be the exact wording from the Supreme Court decision proving and legally defining it as a tax as well as the embedded ruling and instructions on exactly where to find the relevant pages.)
White House spokesperson, Jay Carney, a day after the High Court issued it's ruling and legally defining the individual mandate as a tax, told reporters "It's a penalty, because you have a choice. You don't have a choice to pay your taxes, right."
Obama surrogate, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told reporters on a conference call, "Don't believe the hype that the other side is selling. This is a penalty."
Barack Obama in 2009, vehemently denied the individual mandate was a tax, and while many have seen that video, for those that have not, watch below:
In the Syllabus, page 3 and 4 of the Supreme Court decision, which is embedded below the direct applicable quotes from the ruling.
3. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–B that the individual mandate must be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have health insurance, if such a construction is reasonable.
The most straightforward reading of the individual mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. But, for the reasons explained, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power.It is therefore necessary to turn to the Government’s alternative argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. In pressing its taxing power argument, the Government asks the Court to view the mandate as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product. Because “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality,” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657, the question is whether it is “fairly possible” to interpret the mandate as imposing such a tax, Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62. Pp. 31–32.
4. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III–C, concluding that the individual mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause. Pp. 33–44
The exaction the Affordable Care Act imposes on those without health insurance looks like a tax in many respects. The “[s]hared responsibility payment,” as the statute entitles it, is paid into the Treasury by “taxpayer[s]” when they file their tax returns. 26 U. S. C. §5000A(b). It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. §5000A(e)(2). For taxpayers who do owe the payment, its amount is determined by such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status. §§5000A(b)(3), (c)(2), (c)(4). The requirement to pay is found in the Internal Revenue Code and enforced by the IRS, which—as we previously explained—must assess and collect it “in the same manner as taxes.” Supra, at 13–14. This process yields the essential feature of any tax:it produces at least some revenue for the Government.United States v. Kahriger, 345 U. S. 22, 28, n. 4 (1953). Indeed, the payment is expected to raise about $4 billion per year by 2017. Congressional Budget Office, Payments of Penalties for Being Uninsured Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Apr. 30, 2010), in Selected CBO Publications Related to Health Care Legislation,2009–2010, p. 71 (rev. 2010).
The portion of the decision that deals with the individual mandate as a tax goes from page 37 to page 50 of the PDF embedded below, for those that wish to read the entire reason of why the individual mandate survived as a tax.
From page 22 to page 38, you can also read why the individual mandate would have been ruled unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause and Necessary and Proper Clause, which is what Obama lawyers argued for, and his campaign and surrogates are still attempting the cast it as, by arguing that it is a "penalty" not a tax.
The RNC, Crossroads GPS, and Americans for Prosperity, all within 24 hours of the Supreme Court decision upholding the individual mandate by legally defining it as a tax, the largest tax increase on the middle-class in history, all have video ads out hammering the point home.
The RNC with "Just Another Broken Promise" showing Barack Obama in 2009 disagreeing with anyone that dares to call the "penalty" by it's now-legally defined rightful name, a tax.
“Shouldn’t Obama’s priorities have been creating jobs and ending reckless spending?” asks a female narrator in the spot, which the group says is airing in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. “Instead, he focused on a $2-trillion healthcare takeover that we have to pay for. How can we afford this tax? We’re already struggling.”
[WATCH]
Crossroads GPS has updated their ad in North Dakota against Democratic Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp to accuse her of supporting a measure that “raises half a trillion dollars in taxes on Americans.”
[Update] Mitt Romney also has the first of many ads out titled "Day One, Job One, #FullRepeal"
[WATCH]
Hot Air provides an inside look at how competent Romney's response team was, a four minute speech, the campaign ad shown above and they preparations for the deluge of traffic his donation page started receiving:
At that point, what had been a flood of traffic on the campaign and
RNC websites turned into a deluge. Within an hour, the campaign had to
expand their infrastructure from eight servers to 24 in order to keep
the donation pages running — a contingency that might only happen once
in a campaign, but for which Team Romney had prepared from the
beginning. Traffic increased to five times what the sites would
normally experience, but more critically, donations exploded to
something close to twenty times their normal rate. The
infrastructure decisions made two months ago played a critical role in
keeping up with demand. As Moffatt explained, normal web-page hits
don’t put a lot of stress on servers, but the secure donation
transactions require many times more in server resources. Donor pages
had three to four thousand simultaneous transactions at times in the
rush following Romney’s statement, and the sites stayed up to take
advantage of them all.
In the end, the Romney and RNC campaign websites had 200,000 unique
visitors in the 24-hour period following the Supreme Court decision —
with 47,000 donations. That’s a conversion rate of nearly 25%, far
above the normal rate for campaigns. The success wasn’t limited to just
the campaign websites, either. Obama has a 5-year head start on
Facebook, and has 27 million followers already, while Romney had 2.1
million before the court decision. Despite that, Team Romney beat Team
Obama on Facebook “engagements” in the first 24 hours after the
decision, 493,400 to 464,000, when Obama supporters had more to
celebrate. Romney picked up three times as many supporters in the
period as well, 28,713 to 9,600.
Embedded below is the PDF put together by Americans for Tax Reform, which updates their previous list of tax hikes written into the Obamacare aka Affordable Care Act bill, passed by Democrats and signed into law by Barack Obama.
[Update] Quick note- Scroll to #17 for the individual mandate excise tax.
Barack Obama and Democrats were prepared for the Supreme Court to rule against the individual mandate, part of Obamacare, with whole campaigns based on using a 5-4 ruling against Obamacare to point to judicial activism, a campaign they started well before the actual decision came down. Capaigns based on energizing their base by claiming a ruling against the individual mandate was political and would show a need for more liberal judges, which of course, would only happen if Barack Obama was reelected.
The Supreme Court didn't strike down the individual mandate though, they upheld it, not under the first argument the Obama administration lawyers argued, Commerce Clause, and not under the second argument, Necessary and Proper Clause, but they upheld the individual mandate as a tax.
Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do not do. The Framers knew the difference between doing something and doing nothing. They gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it. Ignoring that distinction would undermine the principle that the Federal Government is a government of limited and enumerated powers. The individual mandate thus cannot be sustained under Congress’s power to “regulate Commerce.”
Conservatives were right, the individual mandate as a penalty for not buying health insurance, under the Commerce Clause or the Necessary and Proper Clause was unconstitutional.
Obama, Democrats and his lawyers knew it, which is why Obama's lawyers also threw their third argument out there- that the penalty was, in reality, a tax.
That is the argument that allowed the Supreme Court to uphold the individual mandate.
That makes the individual mandate. now legally defined as a tax, the largest middle-class tax hike forced on Americans in history.
So the president was ready for the Court to break right or break
left. But instead, Chief Justice Roberts juked. He agreed with the
challengers that the mandate couldn't be justified under the Commerce
Clause or even the Necessary and Proper Clause -- thereby reinforcing
the narrative that the Democratic Congress overreached in passing the
bill. His opinion -- though not the result -- may provide much help in
the future to judicial conservatives, as it suggests that, with the
dissent, five justices are in favor of a more aggressive role for the
Court in policing the bounds of the Commerce Clause (and the Spending
Clause, which was at issue in the Medicaid legislation). And while
Roberts ultimately voted to uphold the Act, he did so on a ground that,
for Obama, plays terribly: that it's a tax.
Now, much as Jefferson was two centuries ago, Obama is boxed in. What
is he to do? He can't criticize the Court for judicial activism, as it
upheld the law (putting aside the way the Court limited the Medicaid
provisions, which are not particularly salient to voters). The decision
undercuts a potential theme of his campaign -- that a conservative Court
is out of control. And yet Obama can't trumpet the decision either,
since it states that Democrats overreached in trying to justify the law
under the Commerce Clause. Worse yet, it calls the mandate something
that Democrats didn't want it to be: a tax.
Conversely, the decision may be the optimal result for Mitt Romney.
If the Court had struck down the mandate, it would have taken off the
table an issue that Republican base voters care tremendously about. But
in upholding the law, the Court didn't just leave that issue on the
table; it gave Romney tremendous ammunition he can use to criticize
Obama as a tax raiser.
Not only Mitt Romney, but as the RNC has already shown within 24 hours of this ruling, the campaign to make sure every voter in the country understands that Obama used the mandate to raise their taxes, with the first of many ads that will hammer the point home.
[WATCH]
Out of all the hidden taxes written into the Obamacare bill, many of which do not go into effect until 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2018, this tax has been spotlighted to voters across the country because of the very public nature of the whole Obamacare battle.
Not only can Mitt Romney criticize Obama as a tax raiser, but can now honestly label him as the biggest tax raiser in history. Romney can also use obama's own words against him when, before Obamacare passed, Obama accused any detractors of lying, misrepresenting the "penalty" portion of the individual mandate as a tax.
[WATCH Obama deny that the individual mandate is a tax increase on all Americans back in 2009]
Conservatives are also energized to the point of donating over $4.3 million to Mitt Romney within 20 hours of the ruling being handed down.
Timothy Dalrymple over at Patheos looks at a few silver linings for Conservatives in the Supreme Court decision and number two is the one that Romney benefits from the most should American voters, who are still opposed to Obamacare as a whole, agree that Obama needs to be replaced in order to repeal Obamacare and that the U.S. Senate needs to flip four seats to give control to Republicans so that Obamacare can be repealed.
2. By placing the ACA under the umbrella of the tax power, Roberts may have made the ACA easier to overturn by several orders of magnitude. The ordinary process, of course, requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. But when it concerns budgetary matters, including taxes (like the Bush tax cuts), 51 votes are sufficient to put the law on hold for 10 years. So, theoretically, 51 Republicans will be capable now of overturning the ACA at least for ten years (at which point it could be reviewed again). Fifty-one Republicans could have attempted this in any case, but now they can do so with much greater plausibility because this is a matter of taxing and spending and not regulation of commerce.
Liberal Reactions
To understand how potentially devastating it is for the Supreme Court to legally label the individual mandate as a tax, making it is the biggest tax hike on Americans in history, one only has to take a look at the reactions from far left Liberals, who by rights should be dancing in the streets that their precious individual mandate was upheld, but are instead beginning to understand the ramifications of the exact ruling.
The scholars expected to see the court gut existing Commerce Clause precedent and overturn the individual mandate in a partisan decision: Five Republican-appointed justices voting to rewrite doctrine and reject Obamacare; four Democratic-appointed justices dissenting.
Roberts was smarter than that. By ruling that the individual mandate was permissible as a tax, he joined the Democratic appointees to uphold the law—while joining the Republican wing to gut the Commerce Clause (and push back against the necessary-and-proper clause as well)
The 5-4 language suggests that Roberts agreed with the liberals. But for the most part, he didn’t. If you read the opinions, he sided with the conservative bloc on every major legal question before the court. He voted with the conservatives to say the Commerce Clause did not justify the individual mandate. He voted with the conservatives to say the Necessary and Proper Clause did not justify the mandate. He voted with the conservatives to limit the federal government’s power to force states to carry out the planned expansion of Medicaid. ”He was on-board with the basic challenge,” said Orin Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University and a former clerk to Justice Kennedy. “He was on the conservative side of the controversial issues.”
[SNIP]
By voting with the liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act, Roberts has put himself above partisan reproach. No one can accuse Roberts of ruling as a movement conservative. He’s made himself bulletproof against insinuations that he’s animated by party allegiances.
But by voting with the conservatives on every major legal question before the court, he nevertheless furthered the major conservative projects before the court — namely, imposing limits on federal power. And by securing his own reputation for impartiality, he made his own advocacy in those areas much more effective. If, in the future, Roberts leads the court in cases that more radically constrain the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce, today’s decision will help insulate him from criticism. And he did it while rendering a decision that Democrats are applauding.
Not only did the Supreme Court legally define the individual mandate as a tax but as Liberals are seeing now, the High Court also just struck a home run for Americans that favor constraining the powers of Congress under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses.
The Bottom Line
While Democrats and Obama were prepared for an all out campaign, which included an all out frontal assault on the Supreme Court, their weapons have just been disarmed.
Republicans, while not happy the individual mandate was not ruled unconstitutional have been handed more ammunition than they know what to do with.
The largest tax in history placed directly on Obama and Democrats' shoulders.
The Supreme Court rejecting the two main arguments against the individual mandate proving Republicans were correct in saying that under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause the mandate would have been unconstitutional.
The resonating argument will be, with unemployment over 8 percent, the economy in the toilet and ordinary Americans barely making ends meet, did we need 20 new taxes, written within Obamacare, forced on us?
The biggest of which starts in 2014. triple by 2015 and double again by 2016:
17. Individual Mandate Excise Tax (Jan 2014): Starting
in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an
income surtax according to the higher of the following
[Update] House of Representatives voted to hold Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress, the vote was 255 to 67. 17 Democrats voted for the resolution, while two Republicans voted against it. 109 NV's.
The House vote today is a Resolution recommending that the House of Representatives find Eric H. Holder, JR., Attorney General, U.S.
Department of Justice, in Contempt Of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Embedded below is the 270 page: Report of the of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform House of Representatives together with additional and minority views.
Following the Supreme Court Decision to uphold the Obamacare aka Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, there are many Conservatives criticizing the Supreme Court,via Twitter and other social media sites.
They shouldn't be.
As Chief Justice Roberts stated in the ruling, the Supreme Court follows a rule that "It is well established that if a statute has two possible meanings, one of which violates the Constitution,courts should adopt the meaning that does not do so."
Though the challengers mostly lost on Thursday, the court did affirm one of their basic arguments: that Congress can't use its powers to regulate interstate commerce to require people to buy insurance. Chief Justice Roberts said the government's arguments on this point would fundamentally change "the relation between the citizen and the federal government."
The majority upheld the insurance mandate on other grounds. The chief justice wrote that the penalty's "practical characteristics pass muster as a tax under our narrowest interpretations of the taxing power." He said a person who does not wish to carry health insurance is left with a "lawful choice to do or not do a certain act, so long as he is willing to pay a tax levied on that choice."
The full 193 page Supreme Court Obamacare decision can be read HERE.
Reactions, including 400K in campaign contributions to Mitt Romney since the decision was rendered less than three hours ago, the RNC web ad, "The Final Verdict" and other tidbits, can be found HERE.
Don't call it a mandate — it's a tax.... and the Supreme Court did not tax the American people with the largest tax increase in history, Barack Obama and Democrats did.
[Update] Mitt Romney is already using this line of thought in his response to the Supreme Court ruling: Bottom line- “If we want to replace Obamacare, we have to replace Obama,” he said.
[Update]THE GOOD NEWS FOR CONSERVATIVES- It is now official and can be used in every campaign ad against Obama's reelection- Barack Obama and Democrats now own the "largest Middle-Class tax increase in history.
The Bad News: Obamacare has been upheld.
[Update]It Starts- Republican politicians are already pointing out that it is no longer an individual mandate it is a tax and Obama has increased taxes on every American.
The President said all along the individual mandate was not a tax, but it has been shown today as even more of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We already found $500 billion in new taxes as part of Obamacare, and now that is multiplied even further. Simply put, the American people have been misled as to what the individual mandate was, and today the veil has been lifted – it is a tax on hardworking, blue collar American families.
[Update- 1:50pm] Romney's total topped $1 million now since the health care ruling, according to The Hill.
Conservatives that were on the fence about Mitt Romney are now saying they are "energized" to vote for him and actively support him, in 2012 so that Obamacare can be repealed entirely.
[Update] How energized are Conservatives after the Supreme Court ruling?
According to Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul the Supreme Court decision upholding President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law led to a windfall for Mitt Romney. Ms. Saul told The Politicker supporters donated at least $100,000 in the 50 minutes between the immediate aftermath of the ruling, which was issued at approximately 10:10 a.m. Shortly before 11:30, Ms. Saul said the total donations had reached over $300,000.
“Fundraising for @MittRomney ticks up to $300k since decision came down. #FullRepeal,” Ms. Saul wrote on Twitter.
The Supreme Court is the final arbiter as I have said more than once, and with this Supreme Court,
5-4 decision, it is a fact that he only way to get rid of Obamacare is
with a full repeal and the only way to to do that is to replace Barack
Obama with Mitt Romney and give control of the Senate to Republicans.
Twitter is already trending the hashtag #fullrepeal
[Update] Mitt Romney is already using this line of thought in his response to the Supreme Court ruling: Bottom line- “If we want to replace Obamacare, we have to replace Obama,” he said.
[WATCH]
Immediately after the Supreme Court ruling was handed down, the RNC had a web ad out titled "The Final Verdict" indicating that a full repeal is now in the hands of America.
The much anticipated Supreme Court Ruling on Obamacare aka Affordable Health Care, decision is expected to come down today. Out of the three rulings expected Obamacare promises to be the biggest and will probably be the third announced.
[Update] The entire 193 pages Supreme Court decisions with dissenting opinions has been embedded below the post.
[Update]THE GOOD NEWS FOR CONSERVATIVES- It is now official and can be used in every campaign ad against Obama's reelection- Barack Obama and Democrats now own the "largest Middle-Class tax increase in history.
The Bad News: Obamacare has been upheld.
[Update] The SCOTUSBlog liveblog event's Amy Howe reports at 10:08AM, "the individual mandate survives as a tax".
10:11AM- Amy Howe: The Medicaid provision is limited but not invalidated.
10:22AM- Lyle: The key comment on salvaging the Medicaid expansion is this (from Roberts): "Nothing in our opinion precludes Congress from offering funds under the ACA to expand the availability of health care, and requiring that states accepting such funds comply with the conditions on their use. What Congress is not free to do is to penalize States that choose not to participate in that new program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding." (p. 55)
10:32--Amy Howe:- In Plain English: The Affordable Care Act, including its individual mandate that virtually all Americans buy health insurance, is constitutional. There were not five votes to uphold it on the ground that Congress could use its power to regulate commerce between the states to require everyone to buy health insurance. However, five Justices agreed that the penalty that someone must pay if he refuses to buy insurance is a kind of tax that Congress can impose using its taxing power. That is all that matters. Because the mandate survives, the Court did not need to decide what other parts of the statute were constitutional, except for a provision that required states to comply with new eligibility requirements for Medicaid or risk losing their funding. On that question, the Court held that the provision is constitutional as long as states would only lose new funds if they didn't comply with the new requirements, rather than all of their funding.
[Update] The vote was 5-4 with CJ Roberts voting to save Obamacare.
SCOTUSBlog is hosting a minute-by-minute discussion and providing links as they come out, HERE.
As soon as the ruling is posted on the United States Supreme Court website, the full decision will be uploaded and be embedded below. Updates will then be added beneath the embed as we are able to read through the decision and the dissenting opinions.
While waiting, two pieces over at SCOTUSBlog are must-reads.
Wall Street Journal reports that Barack Obama has prepared three separate speeches ahead of the ruling to address the final outcome.
Once the decision is posted, uploaded and embedded here, the updates will come fast with reactions and specific quotes from the decision, so refresh often.
After reading the article from the Bradenton Herald which reports that a Federal Judge has rejected the federal authorities arguments to prevent the state of Florida from purging ineligible voters of their rolls, I was left with the question "will the Democrats continue to assert that judges that rule against their position are "activists?"
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle is a Clinton appointee.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled there was nothing in federal voting laws that prevent the state from identifying ineligible voters even if it is close to the upcoming Aug. 14 election.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit earlier this month to halt the purge, saying federal voting laws barred the effort since it was within 90 days of a federal election. U.S. officials also said the list used by Florida had "critical imperfections, which lead to errors that harm and confuse voters."
Hinkle in ruling from the bench said federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to block voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.
Although he said "questioning someone's citizenship" is not a trivial matter, Hinkle also said that non-citizens should not be allowed to vote.
"People need to know we are running an honest election," said Hinkle, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.
A U.S. Department of Justice official said that the department would review the written decision when it was issued and declined to say whether federal authorities planned to appeal the ruling.
Ron Labasky, the legal adviser for the association that represents county election supervisors, sent out a memo late Wednesday telling supervisors if they have "sufficient documentation" that a person is not a U.S. citizen they can now remove them from the voting rolls.
Florida Governor Rick Scott, who initiated this purge in the first place, appears to feel a sense of vindication since the Judge's words are similar to his own arguments:
Scott, who has gone on multiple radio and television programs to defend the state's purge, praised Hinkle's decision.
"The court made a common-sense decision consistent with what I've been saying all along: that irreparable harm will result if non-citizens are allowed to vote," Scott said in a statement.
But during the court hearing, an attorney representing the state said Florida has voluntarily stopped pursuing a longer list of voters it has identified as potentially ineligible.
A spokesman for Scott said the state will not distribute that longer list unless the state can check the names against a federal immigration database. Florida is suing to obtain access to that database after getting rebuffed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Once again it is the Obama administration that is obstructing a state in protecting itself and in this case, obstructing a state from assuring it's residents of the integrity of the election by making sure those voting are actually eligible to vote.
H. Res. __:
Recommends that the House of Representatives find Attorney General Eric
Holder in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena
duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
H. Res. 706:
Authorizes the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to initiate
or intervene in judicial proceedings to enforce certain subpoenas.
Type of Rule
Provides each resolution a closed rule(making no amendments in order) for floor consideration. Reported by a vote of 8 yeas to 4 nays.
Other Elements of the Rule
·Provides
50 minutes of debate equally divided and controlled by the chair and
ranking minority member of the Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform or their respective designees.
·Provides
one motion to refer at the conclusion of debate if offered by Rep.
Dingell of Michigan, which shall be debatable for 10 minutes equally
divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent.
·Provides
20 minutes of debate on H. Res. 706 equally divided and controlled by
the Majority Leader and the Minority Leader or their respective
designees.
·Provides each resolution a motion to recommit.
·Floor Managers: Nugent/McGovern
Floor Action Expected
The rule and resolutions are expected to be debated on the floor: June 28, 2012.
"We'll find out this week if the Supreme Court is listening to the American people and following the U.S. Constitution," said Rep. Xavier Becerra (Calif.), vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, "or if it's becoming more and more what we've seen in the past: a partisan body no different from the Congress."
The ruling, Becerra added, will reveal "whether there are nine people in the Supreme Court who are going to try to do the bidding of special interests or who are actually listening to the needs of the American people guided by the Constitution of the United States."
That is one of the most ridiculous statements made to date.
First: Public opinion- In every poll to date shows the majority or plurality of Americans want some or all of Obamacare to be struck down (68 percent in the CBS News/NewYork Times poll). A small minority wants the health care law to stand as is (24 percent in that same poll).
Second: It is the United States Supreme Court that is the final arbiter of whether a law is constitutional or not, not Democrats, not Republicans and not the American people. It is the Supreme Court Justices responsibility to make that final call. Even then, I refer you to the first point above, follow the damn link to show even IF the Court were to allow public opinion to influence them, it would go against Obamacare.
They have been the final arbiter (power of judicial review) to stop Congress or the Executive Branch from violating the constitution since 1803, Marbury v. Madison.
Third and final point: The reason Supreme Court Justices are given life terms is to insulate them from political pressure from pissants like Representative Xavier Becerra as well as protect them from being pressured or threatened by any President and so they would not be influenced by public opinion either because they are not subject to elections nor reelections.
For attempting to threaten the High Court and for one second thinking that public opinion, or politician's opinions or Barack Obama's opinion should have any influence over wther the individual mandate or the whole law is constitutional, you, Representative Xavier Becerra, get the HUTA award.
For a couple of weeks now, story after story has been emerging at how vulnerable Democratic Congress members, who are up for reelection in November, were planning to skip the Democratic Nation Convention where Barack Obama will formally accept the Democratic party nomination.
Today it is Senator Claire McCaskill announcing she will not attend and Reuters reports that chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Steve Israel, is attempting to get in front of this story of Democrats jumping ship to avoid being linked to the Democratic party before election day, by "officially" encouraging Democrats to stay in their districts instead of attending the Democratic Nation Convention.
"If they want to win an election, they need to be in their districts," New York congressman Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Reuters Washington Summit on Tuesday.
Israel emphasized that Democratic President Barack Obama's poll ratings - which have hovered around 50 percent - have little to do with his stance.
"I don't care if the president was at 122 percent favorability right now," he said. "I think (candidates) should be in their districts," rather than spend time at the convention, which will be in Charlotte, North Carolina, September 3-6.
"A trip to Charlotte may be interesting," Israel said, "but why leave your districts?"
Nothing to see here, move along............
The problem with attempting to turn it all into a "no need to be there" type situation rather than voters thinking these folks want to put some distance between themselves, the Democratic party and Barack Obama, is the pattern that is emerging in other areas, which conflict with the easy out Israel is trying to give those Democrats that are staying away from the convention.
For example: House Democrats are starting to break with the party and specifically the Obama administration in the Fast and Furious scandal and news reports today say that in tomorrow's vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress, some House Democrats will be voting with Republicans against Holder. This is despite the fact that Barack Obama tried to claim executive privilege on the documents Holder has refused to produce subject to a Congressional subpoena.
Rep. Jim Matheson will vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for withholding documents pertaining to a failed Justice Department sting that let guns get into the hands of drug runners.
Matheson, D-Utah, announced his position Tuesday, joining House Republicans, such as Utah Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz, who have railed against Holder’s reaction to the congressional probe into the Justice Department’s "Fast and Furious" operation. One of the lost guns was later used in the murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.
"It just compounds the tragedy when both sides play politics instead of releasing the facts. The Terry family, the public and Congress deserve answers," Matheson said. "Sadly, it seems that it will take holding the attorney general in contempt to communicate that evasiveness is unacceptable."
[Update]Second House Dem saying he will vote for Contempt of Congress Charge against Holder.
[Update #2]Greta Van Susteren says sources claim 20 Dems will vote against Holder.
For three years Obama has been pushing a class wafare campaign and Democrats were fast to jump on the bandwagon, inciting the Occupy movement, until it fizzled and now they are AWOL on the issue.
There is no doubt vulnerable Democrats are distancing themselves from the party and Barack Obama. His coattails are not what they were in 2008.
Why It Won't Work
For the first two years of Obama's presidency, Democrats controlled both the House of Representatives and the Senate, they passed bills that were unpopular as a whole with the American people and with no bipartisan support from Republicans.
They own those votes.
Obamacare aka Affordable Care Act is a perfect example.
The study, by five professors from institutions across the country, looks at the health care bill alongside other contentious votes in the 111th Congress and determines that, more so than the stimulus or the cap-and-trade energy bill, it cost Democrats seats. In fact, they lost almost exactly the number of seats that decided the majority.
The study ran 10,000 simulations of a scenario in which all vulnerable Democrats voted against the health care bill and found that the rejections would have saved Democrats an average of 25 seats, which would have made the House parties close to a tie. (Republicans won 63 seats overall, but the study suggests around 25 of them would have been salvaged.)
In 62 percent of the simulations, Democrats were able to keep the House.
Now it is 2012 and tomorrow the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of the individual mandate which is the heart of Obamacare and whether if that falls the whole bill must fall because Democrats removed the severability clause from earlier version and it was not present in the final bill that was signed by Barack Obama.
This puts Obamacare right back into the spotlight just months from the November 6, 2012 elections.
Republican Campaigns will obviously highlight any Democrat that voted for Obamacare as well as any Democrats that voted against repeal bills in the House of Representatives since 2011.
Whether the Supreme Court rules to uphold the entire bill, strike just the individual mandate, or overturn the law as a whole, doesn't matter to these vulnerable Democrats' reelection chances. Obamacare is an albatross around each and every Democrats' neck.
Same goes for tomorrow's Contempt of Congress vote against AG Eric Holder, any Democrat that does not vote in favor for it will find their vote highlighted in campaigns against them, tying them directly to Democrats and Obama in obstructing the Congressional investigation into Fast and Furious.
Those are just two examples showing Democrats can run but they cannot hide from their ties to the Democratic party, their party line votes, nor their close ties to Barack Obama by rubber stamping his agenda throughout his term in office.
(Changes were made to this post to reflect new info and to correct spelling errors- should know better than to write without at least two cups of coffee!)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent a letter to Barack Obama in regards to his claim of Executive Privilege to protect documents from the Fast and Furious scandal from being turned over to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for their investigation into the gun running operation that resulted in the death of a border Patrol agent, Brian Terry.
In response to the letter sent to Obama, his White House spokesperson Eric Schultz. claimed that "the Courts have routinely considered deliberative process privilege claims and affirmed the right of the executive branch to invoke the privilege even when White House documents are not involved."
Speaker of the House John Boehner's website points out the Obama administration's ignorance between deliberative process privilege and what Obama claimed as "executive privilege.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee letter embedded below and Boehner's website response beneath that.
Yesterday,
House Oversight & Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA)
sent a letter to the president pressing him to explain the basis for
invoking executive privilege over Department of Justice documents
requested as part of the Fast and Furious investigation. The letter states, in part:
“Courts have consistently held that the assertion of
the constitutionally-based executive privilege – the only privilege that
ever can justify the withholding of documents from a congressional
committee by the Executive Branch – is only applicable with respect to
documents and communications that implicate the confidentiality of the
President’s decision-making process, defined as those documents and
communications to and from the President and his most senior advisors.
Even then, it is a qualified privilege that is overcome by a showing of
the committee’s need for the documents. The letters from Messrs. Holder
and Cole cited no case law to the contrary.”
In legal decisions on the scope of executive privilege during the
Bush and Clinton administrations, judges consistently ruled that
executive privilege does NOT extend to Cabinet level officials or their
staffs. As the DC Circuit Court wrote in 2004 in its Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Department of Justice
decision, “communications of staff outside of the White House in
executive branch agencies that were not solicited and received by such
White House advisors could not [be covered by executive privilege].”
Also, as noted in this CRS report,
the DC Circuit Court ruled in 1997, “the presidential communications
privilege should never serve as a means of shielding information
regarding governmental operations that do not call ultimately for direct decision-making by the President.”
The White House appears to know this. This morning, White House spokesman Eric Schultz responded to Chairman Issa’s letter by saying, “the Courts have routinely considered deliberative process privilege
claims and affirmed the right of the executive branch to invoke the
privilege even when White House documents are not involved.” [emphasis
added]
But the president didn’t assert “deliberative process privilege” – he asserted executive privilege, which is reserved to protect internal White House decision-making. When
presidents have asserted it over other executive branch documents and
communications, either courts have ruled those claims to be invalid and
ordered them overturned OR the White House has relented and provided
Congress with the documents that were requested.
So where does that leave its claim of executive privilege? The White
House – through interviews with the president and statements made by
White House staff – has consistently denied any knowledge of facts
surrounding the Fast & Furious operation or the death of U.S. Border
Patrol Agent Brian Terry. But Republicans never suggested the White
House was involved. That’s why the president’s assertion of executive
privilege was so surprising and troubling, and why Speaker Boehner said
last week that the decision to invoke executive privilege is “an
admission” that White House officials were involved in some way. After
all, if the White House wasn’t involved, why would it assert executive privilege?
There are two – and only two – explanations: either the
documents requested will show White House involvement in the fallout and
cover-up of the operation – or the president’s executive privilege
claim is frivolous. As Issa’s letter explains:
“Accordingly, your privilege assertion means one of
two things. Either you or your most senior advisors were involved in
managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it, including
the false February 4, 2011 letter provided by the Attorney General to
the Committee, or, you are asserting a Presidential power that you know
to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a
congressional investigation. To date, the White House has steadfastly
maintained that it has not had any role in advising the Department with
respect to the congressional investigation. The surprising assertion of
executive privilege raised the question of whether that is still the
case.”
