Two Years On: Obamacare

Scenario one:
Dick, I'm going to give you $5. No, wait, I changed my mind, I'm not going to give you $5.

Scenario two:
*walks up to Dick and forcibly removes $5 from his wallet.*

Under your argument, these are legally equivalent scenarios.

 

The practical effect of this interpretation -- which doesn't seem, IMO, to be holding much sway with the Supremes -- is that there is absolutely no limit to what the federal government can do so long as whatever it does can be interpreted as a tax. The feds could pass a law that says that every woman between 15 and 55 who doesn't have a monthly transvaginal ultrasound must pay an end-of-year tax penalty of, say, $12,000. It'd pass constitutional muster because, after all, it'd be a tax.

 

Other than the assault and battery?

 

Semantics

 

Correct.

And this is why we have elections.

 

It's not assault and battery. It may look a lot like assault and battery, but it's actually just a payment from you to me, because the results are the same.

 

No. There are laws against assault and battery. Statutes.

Look, I understand that a lot of you are very emotionally invested in seeing this thing struck down. I get that it's a political Waterloo. But you ought to temper your enthusiasm, because, unless the five conservative justices are uniformly politically motivated, it's not going to happen. And I have too much faith in Scalia and Roberts to believe otherwise.

 

"This isn't a Star of David on the Brooklyn Town Hall. It's a ... five-pointed star fish!"

*SportsJournalists.com nods its approval*

The difference here is that the Constitution does not tell us how a tax has to be structured. It only says that income taxes are permissible. You are filling in the rest of the gaps yourselves, because everyone thinks they know what a tax is at this point and how it looks.

 

It may *look* like the arguments that Dick was completely emotionally invested in are being legally brushed aside as if they were nothing, but cognitive dissonance allows him to explain it away as "politics."

 

You're wrong here Dick. Requiring people to purchase private insurance is also a tax then. And that payment is going to a private company.

Your examples are tax credits, but no one is forced to purchase anything to avoid paying a tax.

Those are payments from the government to private companies. That's not the same as requiring a direct payment from citizens to private companies. It's a big difference.

 

Words mean what they mean.

 

Do I owe a tax if I don't buy a Prius.