Huh??

Sheila Jackson-Lee DFC-TX on the penalty for not having health insurance. Be sure to limber up before reading this; you might pull a muscle.

Verbal gymnastics: "I would make the argument, one, that instead it is an incentive to do right, that it is not penalizing because penalty is punishment. You're not punished if you have health insurance, in fact. And so you are, in fact, incentivized to have health insurance, rather than take the negative, which is to suggest that because we have a penalty you are being punished." --Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX

Follow-up From Our AG on Healthcare Ruling

Our Attorney General ROCKS THE HOUSE!!!!!!

Dear Defender of Liberty,

As I told you earlier today, Virginia won the first round of the constitutional fight over the federal health care law. I also told you I'd get back to you with more details later in the day, and I'm keeping my promise.

I will tell you up front that I will also go into still more detail later this week - when time allows.


Arguments and Outcomes

There were two basic arguments in this case.

First, Virginia argued that the individual mandate was beyond the power of Congress and the President to impose under the Constitution. Specifically, Congress claimed that their regulatory power under the Commerce Clause allowed them to order you to buy their government-approved health insurance, even if you decide not to buy health insurance.

The judge ruled that the federal government does not have the power to compel you to buy health insurance as part of its attempt to regulate the entire field of health care and health insurance. Thus, Virginia won this argument.

Second, the federal government advanced a 'fallback' argument in case it lost on its commerce clause argument. The feds' fallback argument was that the financial penalty you have to pay if you don't buy the government mandated health insurance is a tax.

This may sound like an odd argument from a political standpoint - usually they say everything is NOT a tax (in fact, they argued the penalty was not a tax while they were trying to get the bill passed); however, they changed position after the bill became law to try and save the bill. What they were trying to do was to get the courts to agree that because the penalty would presumably raise some revenue, it was therefore a 'tax' under the taxing and spending for the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution.

No judge in the country has bought this argument, and Judge Hudson was no exception. He ruled that the taxing power of Congress does not save the bill, because the penalty for not buying the mandated health insurance is not a tax.

The federal government only had to win on either of these two arguments, while Virginia needed to win both to prevail, and we won both!

What's Next?

Certainly the federal government will appeal their loss in the district court to the 4th circuit court of appeals within the next 30 days. And whichever side loses in the 4th circuit will certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. And no one has any serious doubts that ultimately the constitutionality of the individual mandate will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That could take approximately (very rough approximation) two years. We are discussing with the Department of Justice accelerating the case, and those discussions have been very cordial thus far. More on that later.


Conclusion

Today is a great day for the Constitution. Today the Constitution has been protected from the federal government, and remember, an important reason for the constitution in the first place was to limit the power of the federal government.

Today is also a day of a small degree of vindication. When we first filed suit, the screeching of the liberals was deafening. Everything from accusing us of playing politics instead of practicing law, to filing what they called a 'frivolous' lawsuit.

I want you to know, that our team makes decisions based on the Constitution and the laws. Period. We deal with the consequences of our decisions separately, but first and foremost we have been and will continue to be true to the Constitution and laws of the United States and Virginia, regardless of whether it's easy or hard in any particular case.

Thank you for your continuing support!

Its a Dessert Topping, Its a Floor Wax, Its A Fine, Its NOT a Tax

"Legal arguments for Obamacare's individual mandate fail the 'Alice in Wonderland' test and the duck test. In two court challenges to the law in the past 11 days and a court hearing today on a third, the Obama administration's legal position is fading faster than the Cheshire Cat.

'The provisions of the Health Care Reform Act at issue here, for the most part, have nothing to do with the assessment or collection of taxes,' Judge Steeh ruled.

This is so important that the federal district judge in Florida, in Thursday's preliminary ruling in the second case, spent 22 pages analyzing it. If the fine is a penalty rather than a tax, Congress' power is far less extensive.

Judge Roger Vinson noted Congress repeatedly called the fine a 'penalty,' explicitly changing its description from a 'tax' that earlier versions of the bill assessed by name. Citing Alice's admonition to Humpty Dumpty that words can't 'mean so many different things' as Humpty intended, Judge Vinson concluded, 'Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing ... [only to] argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely.'

Judge Vinson explained that no matter what Congress called it, the assessment was designed to act as a punishment, not a revenue measure. Hence, it's not a tax.

His 22-page analysis is an exposition of the logic that if something is called a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck -- and the same goes for a penalty. The tax issue is vital because it's the Obama administration's fallback position if it loses on the first and biggest dispute, which is whether Congress has the power under the Commerce Clause not only to regulate commerce, but to force individuals to engage in specific commerce."

--The Washington Times

Lets Give the IRS More Authority, Shall We?

I wonder if they've taken delivery of their new toys yet?

Income
Rendition
Services

IRS to Enforce Health Reform

(CNSNews.com) – The Internal Revenue Service will function as the government’s chief enforcer for health care reform, should President Obama sign the bill into law as expected, monitoring both businesses and individuals to certify whether they have the insurance coverage the government requires.

The tax collection agency will be responsible for monitoring and enforcing compliance with the individual and employer insurance mandates which form the backbone of the Democrats’ hard-won reforms. The bill states that the purpose of the mandates is to regulate “economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased.”
/snip
The IRS would monitor individuals and businesses’ health insurance statuses through the mandatory reporting the bill requires. Under the law, every individual and most businesses are required to report to the IRS, on their tax returns, whether they have purchased or provided the required level of coverage and disclose to the IRS which months, if any, in which they failed to do so.
Using this information, the IRS would then determine whether an employer or individual falls under the mandate, which contains exceptions for religious conscience, hardship, incarcerated persons, and members of Indian tribes.

Yeah baby..Lets give the IRS more authority and better shotguns.

What If I Don’t Buy Insurance?

The only exception I take is the comparison to automobile insurance. It’s NOT the same.

What happens if I don’t buy health insurance?

Under the health care overhaul passed Sunday, most individuals would be required to buy a minimum health insurance policy — just as most drivers today are required to have car insurance. This policy won’t kick in until 2014, however.
After then, if you don’t buy insurance, you would have to pay a penalty on your annual income taxes. The reconciliation bill in the Senate would start with a flat penalty of $695 per member of your household each year. The maximum penalty would be 2.5 percent of your household income. (That’s $1,300 for a family making $52,029 a year, the median household income in 2008.) The penalty would rise with the cost of living in future years.

– Ryan Teague Beckwith, Congress.org