Someone did tell current WH Chief of Staff Jack Lew that Solicitor General Donald Verilli argued that Obamacare was a tax hike?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pWQ2oi-LfM&feature=player_embedded
It’d be a shame if nobody had told the man. Kind of funny, but a shame.
Moe Lane
PS: I hear that CBS News has somehow managed to find two unnamed sources who will ‘verify’ a story – an unkind person would use the phrase ‘liberal masturbation exercise’ – alleging that US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was pressured into changing his vote. Like Jazz Shaw of Hot Air, I have been doing this gig for far too long to simply believe anonymous sources which are eager to tell me a story that just happens to be potentially damaging to conservative morale. So either back that up with a name, or don’t waste my time.
The only way it was found constitutional was by being a tax and they still want to lie about it. Of course they want to call it anything else because they know what happens to the party that shoves the biggest tax increase in history down people throats. In the end there will be neither pity nor mercy.
I’m very angry with Roberts, so I’m inclined to believe the CBS story, but the one reservation I have is that it says Roberts presented the conservatives with the option of severing the mandate and letting the rest through, but they turned it down. I find it hard to believe that Kennedy would turn that down, given that refusing the offer meant then whole thing (more or less) would go through.
… it says Roberts presented the conservatives with the option of severing the mandate and letting the rest through, but they turned it down. I find it hard to believe that Kennedy would turn that down …
But given the precedents on severability and the fact that the severability clause was deliberately removed in the Senate, that option would have been even more of an unjustified stretch than what Roberts actually did.
The Roberts court has previously decided laws without severability clauses can be severable. To do it again, would have been FAR less damaging to the Constitution than to rewrite the mandate language and invent a new super tax authority.
To do it again, would have been FAR less damaging to the Constitution than to rewrite the mandate language and invent a new super tax authority.
Oh, I agree with that statement! I meant that the question of “Does it say it’s severable? No? Then it isn’t!” is a less convoluted legal argument than the one Justice Roberts used to justify calling the mandate a tax.
But the more I think about it, the more I’m coming to believe that you’re right …
I’m actually starting to wonder whether Chief Justice Roberts was threatened with something more substantial than bad publicity by someone in the Obama administration.