Originally published June 25 2015
Words no longer have meaning: Supreme Court ignores Obamacare text to uphold wealth redistribution
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, upheld a rather unique legal principle this week, that despite what words are actually written into a law, they don't really mean what they actually say.
That's the logic that a majority of justices utilized after they once again affirmed a critical portion of the Affordable Care Act: namely, that all exchanges, state and federal, are the same, because that's supposedly what Congress meant when crafting the law.
Only, that's not what Congress wrote into the law.
The primary issue under consideration by the high court was whether residents of states that did not establish exchanges were eligible for such subsidies. As noted in the plaintiffs' argument, the Affordable Care Act clearly notes that subsidies are only supposed to be available through exchanges "established by the state." [emphasis added]
However, Roberts and five other justices wanted nothing to do with that. To them, the only thing that was important was the intent of the Legislative branch; they believed, as claimed in their ruling, that lawmakers' intent to ensure all Americans had health insurance coverage was good enough, no matter what the law actually said.
'Words? What are words?'
"In this instance," he wrote, "the context and structure of the act compel us to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase."
"Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them," he added. "If at all possible, we must interpret the act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter."
Critics of the ruling are claiming, and rightfully so, that the Roberts Obamacare majority made a great many assumptions for a court that is only charged with literal interpretations of both law and the Constitution.
Opponents of the law argued in court that the phrase – "established by the state" – was intentionally written as a means of coercing states to set up their own exchanges. When 30-odd states refused, that's when the White House instructed the Internal Revenue Service to issue subsidies to Obamacare enrollees who signed up through the federal exchange.
"It is implausible to believe that Congress gave the IRS discretion to authorize $150 billion per year in federal spending, particularly when Congress had directly spoken to this issue," the challengers to the IRS subsidy said in a court filing with the DC Circuit last year. "Major economic decisions like these — indeed, any decisions granting tax credits — must be made unambiguously by Congress itself."
And that, itself, is now another danger to our constitutional order: The legislative taxation process is also pretty much null and void. Now, presidents, using their executive power over the federal bureaucracy, can simply instruct an agency to levy the American people without approval from Congress, the only branch of government authorized by the Constitution to impose taxes.
'We should start calling this law SCOTUScare'
The effect of the majority's ruling was not lost on Justice Antonin Scalia, a constitutional originalist.
"We should start calling this law SCOTUScare," Scalia wrote, referring to the several times the high court has ruled on controversial parts of ObamaCare.
"The court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says 'Exchange established by the State' it means 'Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government,' Scalia wrote. "That is of course quite absurd, and the court's 21 pages of explanation make it no less so."
He also noted: "Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is 'established by the State.' ... Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved."
What happens next is predictable – despite its pledge to provide more coverage to previously uninsured, it will inevitably lead to less coverage. What will the Roberts Obamacare majority do then?
Sources:
http://hosted.ap.org
http://www.newsmax.com
http://www.nationalreview.com
http://www.nationalreview.com
http://www.usnews.com
http://www.usnews.com
http://www.americanthinker.com
http://www.newrepublic.com
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