1) This law was passed in Congress as a PENALTY, and expressly not as a tax. This fact was stated over and over by President Obama and Democrats - it is NOT a tax! The Justices wanted to know on day one of oral arguments if this is a tax. Since they said it was not a tax, no arguments were given against the large tax increase of the law.
2) The Democrats clarified that the constitutional authority was theirs under the Commerce Act.
3) Justice John Roberts actually rewrote the law when he changed the mechanism to being a tax, which would give Congress the authority.
4) First thing wrong with this is that tax issues are expressly forbidden to be judged by a court until the time that someone actually has had to pay the tax, set to start not until 2014 so the Obama could get reelected before Americans knew just how much the penalty would be. It would seem that this issue would have forced the Supreme Court to throw the case out for now.
5) This is a brand new type of tax, and many wonder if, as when the Income Tax was initiated, there needed to be a law permitting the new type of tax.
Therefore, a law which was never passed by Congress is now the law of our land. I wonder if the Supreme Court has ever before rewritten a law in order to uphold it. Conservatives need to make sure that Americans know that our President lied to us all when he repeatedly said that for those making less than $200,000 there would be no new taxes during his Administration. They need to know that other lies were sold when we were told that we could keep our insurance, our doctor, and our private health care. They need to know that as of now, Congress can force us to do anything they want as long as they call it a tax. This is a sad week for America.]
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“We’re not going to re-litigate health care reform,” President Obama told an audience in Philadelphia earlier this month. The American people “understand we don’t need to refight this battle over health care,” he said at a fundraiser in Atlanta on Tuesday. “What the country cannot afford to do is refight the political battles of two years ago,” he said after the Court issued its decision.
But Obama is wrong. The health care battle is not settled. On the contrary: Justice Roberts’s opinion has airlifted the combatants to a different battlefield altogether. By affirming the individual mandate not on the grounds of the Commerce Clause but the congressional power to tax, Roberts has, intentionally or not, exposed the president as a liar, and as willing to raise taxes on the middle class.
There are the laughable and false promises Obama made in his doomed attempt to win public support for his signature legislation. He said no one will lose his health plan, but the law has no such guarantee. He said Obamacare would reduce costs, but costs have risen. He said the law will lower premiums, but premiums are likely to rise. He said medical malpractice reform was a “priority,” but there is no tort reform in his bill. He said the measure will reduce the deficit, but the slightest change in its structure or increase in the number of beneficiaries will balloon the national debt.
Then there are the taxes. Obama has said throughout his candidacy and his presidency that he will not raise taxes on anyone whose household income is less than $250,000 a year. He even attacked John McCain’s 2008 health care reform as a middle-class tax increase. Americans for Tax Reform, however, identifies no less than 20 additional or higher taxes the bill imposes on incomes of different levels. Justice Roberts’s ruling that “the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax” uncloaks the individual mandate as one of the largest middle-class tax increases in history. This is a Death-Star-worthy laser aimed at Obama’s planet-sized ego. His credibility is dust. “The bill was sold to the American people as a deception,” minority leader Mitch McConnell said on the floor of the Senate Thursday. Sarah Palin put it more succinctly: “Obama lies; freedom dies.” http://freebeacon.com/the-tea-partys-roe/
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GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney echoed this sentiment, saying he would act to repeal the law on his first day in office, if elected.
“This is the time of choice for the American people,” he said. “Our mission is clear: If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama. My mission is to make sure we do exactly that.”
DeMint said if Republicans retake the Senate they could potentially repeal the law through the “budget reconciliation” process, which only requires 51 votes, as opposed to 60. Democrats used this tactic to pass the final version of the law after losing their 60-vote majority in January 2010.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.), who called the decision “a crushing blow to patients throughout the country,” said the House would vote to repeal the law when Congress returns from the July 4th recess.
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) argued the court’s ruling “strengthens” the case for repeal, saying: “It is now in the hands of the American people to determine whether this disastrous law will stand.”
The court concurred with the opposition’s argument that the federal government did not have the authority to regulate economic inactivity—the act of not purchasing health insurance—under the Commerce Clause, and in so doing placed significant restrictions on federal power.
“On the liberty side, we won,” said Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, another leading opponent of the law. “The Supreme Court for the first time declared the outer limits of federal power under the Constitution.”
Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the Commerce Clause “is not a general license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave.”
Yet the mandate was still upheld as a tax, which opponents point out was precisely the opposite argument the president and his administration made in defense of the law.
“Ironically, the Supreme Court has decided to be far more honest about Obamacare than Obama was,” said Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. “They rightly have called it a tax.” http://freebeacon.com/win-some-lose-some/
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Chief Justice John Roberts ruled Thursday that Barack Obama used “magic words” to characterize a multi-billion dollar tax increase on middle and low income earners as a “penalty.”
“‘Magic words or labels’ should not ‘disable an otherwise constitutional levy,’” he wrote, citing a 1992 sales tax case. “This process yields the essential feature of any tax: it produces at least some revenue for the Government … $4 billion per year by 2017.”
The 5-4 ruling upholding Obama’s chief legislative achievement undermines the president’s claim that he would never raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 per year. http://freebeacon.com/a-tax-unlike-any-other/
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The
GOP has largely turned its nose up at the tea party, which is its
salvation. The tea party movement provided the GOP with the energy, man
power, and money to take back the House in 2010 and come close in the
Senate. For that, the GOP has routinely given the tea party the middle
finger and, instead of fighting for repeal of Obamacare, excused itself
while the Supreme Court did the heavy lifting.
John
Roberts, the man who gave us the Citizens United case has now, with a
laughably inane ruling, told us we have to fight politically. The
millions of people who joined the tea party in 2009 only to go back to
their jobs and families after the 2010 election are now awake.
In
waking, what they are seeing is a government claiming that food stamps
will make you look amazing and that encourages people to party with food
stamps. They are seeing a corrupt tourism program. They are seeing tax
cheats getting billions from Barack Obama. They are seeing high
unemployment, the United States Attorney General held in contempt of
congress, the GOP cave on fiscal issues, and the Supreme Court deciding
something the vast majority of Americans hate is constitutional.
And
they are seeing that, just like in 2010, they are the only ones who can
stop Barack Obama and the Democrats. The GOP is nothing without the tea
party. Tea Party activists are awake again. And thanks to John Roberts
they are mad as hell. http://www.redstate.com/erick/2012/06/29/awake/
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Fourth,
in forcing us to deal with this politically, the Democrats are going to
have a hard time running to November claiming the American people need
to vote for them to preserve Obamacare. It remains deeply, deeply
unpopular with the American people. If they want to make a vote for them
a vote for keeping a massive tax increase, let them try.
Fifth,
the decision totally removes a growing left-wing talking point that
suddenly they must vote for Obama because of judges. The Supreme Court
as a November issue for the left is gone. For the right? That
sound you hear is the marching of libertarians into Camp Romney, with
noses held, knowing that the libertarian and conservative coalitions
must unite to defeat Obama and Obamacare.
Finally,
while I am not down on John Roberts like many of you are today, i will
be very down on Congressional Republicans if they do not now try to shut
down the individual mandate. Force the Democrats on the record about
the mandate. Defund Obamacare. This now, by necessity, is a political
fight and the GOP sure as hell should fight.
60%
of Americans agree with them on the issue. And guess what? The
Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of
Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal
fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing
repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts
has forced everyone onto that ground.
It
seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that
he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life
tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.
*A
friend points out one other thing — go back to 2009. Olympia Snowe was
the deciding vote to get Obamacare out of the Senate Committee. Had she
voted no, we’d not be here now.
Sincerely yours, 
Erick Erickson
Editor,RedState.com
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The decision stated:
Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”
The Supreme Court has told us the answer even while helping trample our rights.
Throw them out. Every single one of them.
Throw them out for violating their oath to uphold the constitution.
Throw them out for a massive government scheme to destroy private healthcare.
Throw them out for massive new taxes and a tightening of their socialist stranglehold on our economy. Rand Paul
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Washington, DC – (6/28/12) – Generation Opportunity President Paul T. Conway, former Chief of Staff for the US Department of Labor and former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources for the Commonwealth of Virginia, has issued the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision today on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:
“President Obama's health care law stands as one of the largest tax increases in American history, it will be paid for by young Americans, whose dreams and plans for the future have already been derailed by failed policies that have denied their access to full-time, meaningful jobs in their chosen career paths. Young adults know they will pay the true costs of President Obama’s legislation – over a trillion dollars more in federal spending, more waste and fraud, increased American debt, and the inability to keep or choose healthcare plans that best suit their needs as individuals. Elections have consequences, and young adults will be organizing themselves far more actively than some might assume – they will not settle for leadership that ignores their concerns, limits their freedoms, and continues to bankrupt their futures.” GENERATION OPPORTUNITY
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