Democrats now claim that the infamous 1099 business reporting mandate that the Senate repealed this week was an accident, as if they were as surprised as everyone else to learn that this destructive provision had crept by itself into law. The truth is that the 1099 rule emerged from the same core ideology as ObamaCare, and its overwhelming repudiation by Democrats may be an important inflection point in the health-care debate.
The 1099 rule is the first of the ballast to go over the side, and Democrats hope that such “improvements” will be enough to ride out the public storm. Then again, they also claimed that voters would learn to love ObamaCare once it had been stuffed through Congress, among many other misjudgments. The political history is revealing and instructive.
Less than a year ago, liberals couldn’t see how anyone could possibly object to a rule requiring businesses to file 1099 tax forms with the Internal Revenue Service every time they spent more than $600 with a single vendor. Yes, this would result in a vast new paperwork and accounting burden for 30 million businesses and hit start-ups hardest, not to mention farms, charities and churches. But Democrats saw IRS surveillance of nearly all business-to-business transactions as merely an exercise in good government.
The point was to close the “tax gap,” the largely mythological difference between the estimated taxes due under the business tax code and what the IRS actually collects. During the Bush years, Democrats and more than a few Republicans convinced themselves that businesses were cheating the government out of revenues through deliberate under-reporting and various tax shelters.
This notion prevailed at the Senate Finance Committee under both Democratic Chairman Max Baucus and Republican Chairman Chuck Grassley. Budget Chairman Kent Conrad was another evangelist. In its first budget, the Obama White House promised “robust” tax compliance enforcement “to narrow the annual tax gap of over $300 billion,” in contrast to the lethargy of its predecessor.
The 1099 ObamaCare footnote thus received no scrutiny at first because it was so mundane. Everyone in Washington agreed that corporations were stealing billions of dollars every year that rightfully belonged to Congress to spend. (The issue only blew up when the IRS’s National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, followed by the GOP and the business lobby, made it a priority last summer.)
“Obviously, I find the two that hold it unconstitutional more compelling, but I mean for logical reasons, Which is to say the interstate commerce clause – there’s no point in having even any limits on Congress’ authority if they can force citizens, all citizens to buy a product,…. By the way, if this is constitutional, then Republicans should turn around and mandate all citizens be forced to purchase a gun and a Bible. And, there’s a lot more evidence that owning a gun and a Bible is better for society than everyone having to own health insurance. But, if that’s what Congress has the right to do, we can have all kinds of mandates. The interstate commerce clause says Congress can regulate either something that affects interstate commerce or the instrumentalities of interstate commerce. I think the judge, Judge Vinson makes a good case as apparently the plaintiffs did that simply not buying insurance is not an activity.” ~ Classic Coulter! (video at bottom)
As speculated earliertoday, a second judge has ruled Obamacare unconstitutional. Federal Judge Roger Vinson ruled today that President Barack Hussein Obama’s health care law is unconstitutional. To add insult to “health care” injury, the federal judge used Obama’s past words against him.
In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, when the then-Illinois senator argued there were other ways to achieve reform short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.
“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, ‘If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of his 78-page ruling Monday.
Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.Hey Barack, words do have consequences don’t they and you do not get to have it both ways. Actually, as stated by Weasel Zippers, some one just got their butt handed to them. During the Democrat primary, Hillary Clinton’s insurance plan required that purchase insurance, Obama’s did not. Since the passage of Obamacare, the president has been singing a different tune and defending the government forcing Americans to purchase a product and claiming regulation authority for inactivity. However,
During the presidential campaign, one key difference between Mr. Obama and his chief opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was that Mrs. Clinton‘s plan required all Americans to purchase insurance and Mr. Obama‘s did not.
Congress eventually included the individual mandate in the bill it passed, and Mr. Obama signed that into law in March. Since then, he and his administration have defended its constitutionality, arguing the mandate is the linchpin that brings in more customers to insurance companies, which in turn allows those companies to expand the availability and lower the cost of coverage.
However, Judge Vinson did not just strike down the federal mandate, he struck down the entire health care law, Obama’s crown jewel, as unconstitutional. Judge Vinson concluded that the federal mandate insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound”to other provisions of Obamacare that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law. OUCH! What is the LEFT to do, as they are all whine and no legal argument?
But unlike a Virginia judge in December, Judge Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., concluded that the insurance requirement was so “inextricably bound” to other provisions of the Affordable Care Act that its unconstitutionality required the invalidation of the entire law.
“The act, like a defectively designed watch, needs to be redesigned and reconstructed by the watchmaker,” Judge Vinson wrote.
(“Like” Scared Monkeys on Face Book.) Here is the ruling that Scared Monkeys linked to:
This ruling may be used almost as is to go to the Supreme Court. It is also a study in original intent as it references many cases from and including the debate on this clause in the Federalist Papers. As such, Constitutional law professors are scrambling to incorporate this in some manner into their class routines. Greta Van Susteren interviewed new Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and made the point that this should go straight to the Court in about 60-days, max. Great great point!
In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, when the then-Illinois senator argued there were other ways to achieve reform short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.
“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, ‘If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of his 78-page ruling Monday.
Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.
The footnote was attached to the most critical part of Judge Vinson‘s ruling, in which he said the “principal dispute” in the case was not whether Congress has the power to tackle health care, but rather whether it has the power to compel individual citizens to purchase insurance.
Judge Vinson cited Mr. Obama‘s campaign words from an interview with CNN to show that there are other options that could pass constitutional muster including then-candidate Obama‘s plan.
During the presidential campaign, one key difference between Mr. Obama and his chief opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was that Mrs. Clinton‘s plan required all Americans to purchase insurance and Mr. Obama‘s did not.
Congress eventually included the individual mandate in the bill it passed, and Mr. Obama signed that into law in March. Since then, he and his administration have defended its constitutionality, arguing the mandate is the linchpin that brings in more customers to insurance companies, which in turn allows those companies to expand the availability and lower the cost of coverage.
Much of Judge Vinson‘s ruling was a discussion of how the Founding Fathers, including James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, saw the limits on congressional power. Judge Vinson hypothesized that, under the Obama administration‘s legal theory, the government could mandate that all citizens eat broccoli. (emphasis added)
At a House Budget Committee hearing earlier today, Medicare’s Chief Actuary Rick Foster provided a concise, damaging verdict on two key promises of the health care law’s proponents.
McCLINTOCK: “True or false: The two principle promises that were made in support of Obamacare were one, that it would hold costs down. True or false?”
FOSTER: “I would say false, more so than true.”
McCLINTOCK: “The other promise… was the promise that if you like your plan, you can keep it. True or false?”
Yet another embarrassing detour into constitutional theory, progressive-style, via CNS. Serious question: Isn’t it high time for Pelosi to call a caucus meeting so that they can hammer out their talking points on this subject once and for all? The left frets endlessly about its poor “messaging” on ObamaCare, yet I can’t help feeling that not being able to answer a painfully basic question about its constitutionality — again and again and again — might, perhaps, be contributing to negative public perceptions. The obvious answer when this issue is raised is, of course, “the Commerce Clause.” The Commerce Clause, according to the left and generations of Supreme Court precedent, entitles Congress to do virtually anything it wants in regulating the economy. If you can dream it, the Commerce Clause can do it! That’s what a government of “limited powers” is all about, right? And yet, behold the parade of dispiritingly horrible answers offered by top Democrats when confronted about it. Phil Hare and Pelosi herself shrugged off the issue of constitutionality as being almost beneath them; Daniel Akaka flatly admitted he didn’t know of any constitutional basis; Sheila Jackson Lee chimed in yesterday with an incoherent due process defense; and now here’s John Lewis not only bringing equal protection into it but citing the “pursuit of happiness” clause in the Constitution’s preamble. Which, er, doesn’t exist: As CNS notes, that’s a phrase from the Declaration of Independence. What Lewis means, I assume, is the “general welfare” clause of the preamble, which is a lame argument insofar as the preamble doesn’t have the force of law but at least has the virtue of citing a provision that’s actually in the Constitution.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, said on Tuesday afternoon that repealing the national health care law would violate the Constitution.
Arguing that the Commerce Clause provides the constitutional basis for ObamaCare, Jackson Lee said repealing the law by passing Republicans’ H.R. 2 violates both the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause….
CNN has a breaking alert on a ruling by a federal judge in Virginia that rejects ObamaCare as unconstitutional:
A federal judge in Virginia has ruled parts of the sweeping health care reform effort led by President Obama to be unconstitutional. This is the first federal court to strike down the law, contradicting other recent rulings the law was permissible. The key issue of contention was the “individual mandate” requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance by 2014.
This case (Virginia v Sebelius) was the lawsuit brought by the states against ObamaCare. This is the test case that had the best chance of overturning the law, and the states have apparently won an important finding in the district court.
According to Dan Foster at NRO, the judge ruled that Congress “exceeded its authority” by imposing an individual mandate to purchase insurance.
Update: Actually, this suit was brought by Virginia alone. The other case brought by 20 other states in one suit is still pending.
….Judge Hudson, of the Eastern District of Virginia, said the individual mandate “would invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.”
He added: “At its core, this dispute is not simply about regulating the business of insurance—or crafting a scheme of universal health insurance coverage—it’s about an individual’s right to choose to participate.”
Separately, federal Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola, Fla., will hear arguments Thursday in a challenge brought by officials in 20 states, and he could offer the clearest indication yet of how he will rule.
