Obama solicitor general: If you don't like mandate, EARN LESS MONEY

[Quantum Windbag]

You haven't shown anything. Your claim is still the same "it's unconstitutional because I say it is" junk you've been trotting out all along. You try to bring a Supreme Court case in to it, but the analogy you make doesn't hold, so you start throwing another temper tantrum.

Bullshit.

You know what the problem with trying to say you did not say something when everything you say is recorded? People can go back and show you what you said.

You posted this:

I disagree with your belief that "discriminatory taxation" is wrong. There is a legitimate public interest in incentivizing certain behaviors and actions. Where I do agree is that this action shouldn't be done via the tax code. It creates highly inefficient outcomes.

I then posted a Supreme Court case that specifically allowed a company to challenge taxes because they are discriminatory. That shows that your belief that taxes are allowed to discriminate if the intent is promote behaviors and actions that you find are legitimate.

My sole purpose was to show you that your belief did not fit the facts in the real world, and you have run around for a couple of pages accusing me making unsupported statements. If I express an opinion I know it is an opinion, and say so. This was not an opinion, you were wrong.

To reiterate.

I have proven your opinion that discriminatory taxation to enact social policy is indeed wrong under our law. You yourself have stated that you think using the tax code to accomplish social engineering, but you support it because you agree with the goal of the social engineering. My opinion (note that I am not going to back this up with any link, I will simply let you do so for me) is that you would scream if you disagreed with the social engineering goal, but I expect you view that as being consistent. Personally, I oppose using the tax code for social engineering period, even if I like the goals.

Two separate issues. One is your opinion that social engineering through discriminatory taxation is right, the other is the mandate itself. Discrimination is always wrong, which makes your support of it wrong. I believe that the mandate is unconstitutional, but I have seen some very good arguments about why it is not. A couple of them have been so persuasive that I believe that the Supreme Court might actually have some sound arguments to support it if they choose to do so. Not one of them came from anyone on this board because everyone here does exactly what you say I am going, and claiming it is constitutional simply because they say it is.

Yes, that includes you.

You keep falling in to the same hole. I never said the taxes were discriminatory. That was a quotation of your claim.

You did, however, say that you do not believe discriminatory taxation is wrong. I responded by showing that pointing out that the Supreme Court disagrees. Since then you have been trying to argue that I said something else, and that you did not say something other than what I am responding to.

Are you stuck in some time of warp where you cannot simply admit that someone disagrees with your point, and that pertinent court precedents back me up.

By the way, it was not a quotation of mine you responded to in the first place.

Thanks for playing.

 

[Polk]

Notice the quotation marks? I was referring to his characterization of the taxes as discriminatory.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Also, for those claiming today that the individual mandate is not a tax, and therefore unconstitutional, how do you square that with arguing at the time that Obama was lying because the individual mandate is a tax hike?

Obama Denies that Individual Mandate is a Tax Increase - WSJ.com

You can't have it both ways.

Who is trying to have it both ways? Obama is the one that is denying it is a tax, and then arguing in court that it is.

I, on the other hand, am arguing that it is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy something. I then point out that it is not a tax because taxes provide revenue for the government, and this does not do so. I then argue that, even if the court buys the argument an argument that it is a tax, it is still unconstitutional because it is a direct tax that will not meet the constitutional requirement to be equally apportioned among the sates.

Yet, for some reason, you take the fact that I can articulate arguments against every position you have and try to make it seem I am confused and trying to hold two positions that contradict each other.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

They already have avoided the constitutional issue if the courts stick to existing precedent, because previous rulings have said that taxes are like ducks: if walks like one and talks like one, it is one.

I've been curious to find precedent regarding this 'tax that isn't a tax but really is' stuff. Do you have links? Does the precedent specifically address deliberate deception?

I don't have links off the top of my head, but I'll try to find more information for you. I would note that the argument here is very similar to the one made against the constitutionality of Social Security and which the Supreme Court rejected 7-2 in Helvering v. Davis (1937).

Did anyone ever argue that the Social Security tax is not a tax in order to get it passed? I must have missed that, but I wasn't alive at the time, so I will admit it is possible. I find it very hard to believe since the very first note in the decision points out a corporation arguing that collecting and paying that tax would harm them and their shareholders. Maybe I am not deluded enough to see the world the way you do though.

 

[Polk]

Also, for those claiming today that the individual mandate is not a tax, and therefore unconstitutional, how do you square that with arguing at the time that Obama was lying because the individual mandate is a tax hike?

Obama Denies that Individual Mandate is a Tax Increase - WSJ.com

You can't have it both ways.

Who is trying to have it both ways? Obama is the one that is denying it is a tax, and then arguing in court that it is.

I, on the other hand, am arguing that it is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy something. I then point out that it is not a tax because taxes provide revenue for the government, and this does not do so. I then argue that, even if the court buys the argument an argument that it is a tax, it is still unconstitutional because it is a direct tax that will not meet the constitutional requirement to be equally apportioned among the sates.

Yet, for some reason, you take the fact that I can articulate arguments against every position you have and try to make it seem I am confused and trying to hold two positions that contradict each other.

You may not personally be confused, but your political allies certainly are. I've been consistent in arguing that the individual mandate is a tax. I don't care what some politician said about it. I care about the actual legal principle involved. The individual mandate is tax levied on income. Congress has the power to tax. It even has the power to tax things it would not have the jurisdiction to regulate. The tax does raise revenue (four trillion in the first five years, according to CBO).

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Also, for those claiming today that the individual mandate is not a tax, and therefore unconstitutional, how do you square that with arguing at the time that Obama was lying because the individual mandate is a tax hike?

Obama Denies that Individual Mandate is a Tax Increase - WSJ.com

You can't have it both ways.

Who is trying to have it both ways? Obama is the one that is denying it is a tax, and then arguing in court that it is.

I, on the other hand, am arguing that it is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy something. I then point out that it is not a tax because taxes provide revenue for the government, and this does not do so. I then argue that, even if the court buys the argument an argument that it is a tax, it is still unconstitutional because it is a direct tax that will not meet the constitutional requirement to be equally apportioned among the sates.

Yet, for some reason, you take the fact that I can articulate arguments against every position you have and try to make it seem I am confused and trying to hold two positions that contradict each other.

You may not personally be confused, but your political allies certainly are. I've been consistent in arguing that the individual mandate is a tax. I don't care what some politician said about it. I care about the actual legal principle involved. The individual mandate is tax levied on income. Congress has the power to tax. It even has the power to tax things it would not have the jurisdiction to regulate. The tax does raise revenue (four trillion in the first five years, according to CBO).

It is not levied on income, it is levied on everyone who is alive. That makes it a head tax, not an income tax. There is a credit based on income, but the tax is not an income tax in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Polk]

Who is trying to have it both ways? Obama is the one that is denying it is a tax, and then arguing in court that it is.

I, on the other hand, am arguing that it is unconstitutional because it forces people to buy something. I then point out that it is not a tax because taxes provide revenue for the government, and this does not do so. I then argue that, even if the court buys the argument an argument that it is a tax, it is still unconstitutional because it is a direct tax that will not meet the constitutional requirement to be equally apportioned among the sates.

Yet, for some reason, you take the fact that I can articulate arguments against every position you have and try to make it seem I am confused and trying to hold two positions that contradict each other.

You may not personally be confused, but your political allies certainly are. I've been consistent in arguing that the individual mandate is a tax. I don't care what some politician said about it. I care about the actual legal principle involved. The individual mandate is tax levied on income. Congress has the power to tax. It even has the power to tax things it would not have the jurisdiction to regulate. The tax does raise revenue (four trillion in the first five years, according to CBO).

It is not levied on income, it is levied on everyone who is alive. That makes it a head tax, not an income tax. There is a credit based on income, but the tax is not an income tax in any way, shape, or form.

Go read the bill before you embarrass yourself further.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Are you trying to tell me that the mandate does not apply to everyone under the age of 65? If so I suggest you read the law and link to the portion that proves that.

 

[Polk]

No, it doesn't. The mandate specifically excludes people who have incomes under the poverty line, people for who the cost of the minimum policy is greater than eight percent of income, and those with religious exemptions (the Amish, for example).

 

[Quantum Windbag]

No, it doesn't. The mandate specifically excludes people who have incomes under the poverty line, people for who the cost of the minimum policy is greater than eight percent of income, and those with religious exemptions (the Amish, for example).

It does not exclude them from having some type of insurance. They set an arbitrary definition about how much of your income you have to spend on insurance, and then exempted some people from the penalty they claim will not be enforced. You might be able to argue that the penalty is a tax, if it were not actually unconstitutional to impose a penalty without due process, or to impose a tax as punishment, but we are not talking about the penalty, we are talking about the mandate.

Were you confused?

 

[dblack]

If making false claims about a proposal invalidated laws, there are a ton of laws conservatives love that would come off the books tomorrow.

And they probably should in many cases. If there was a way to reverse the damage done by the lies of the Bush administration, I'd be all over it. Sadly, it's too late for the most of it. It might not be too late to stop the ACA though. We'll see.

 

[dblack]

I don't have links off the top of my head, but I'll try to find more information for you.

Yeah. I haven't been able to find anything. But I don't have access to a lot of legal statute. Not even sure where I'd look beyond googling, and that hasn't produced anything.

 

[Polk]

I don't have links off the top of my head, but I'll try to find more information for you.

Yeah. I haven't been able to find anything. But I don't have access to a lot of legal statute. Not even sure where I'd look beyond googling, and that hasn't produced anything.

It's not what I was looking for, but I did find something that sets out the argument.

http://aca-litigation.wikispaces.com/file/view/constitutional+law+profs+amicus.pdf