[MENTION=43831]RKMBrown[/MENTION]
a. So basically you are arguing that if Obama care mandated that we buy insurance it would be unconstitutional, but since it did not mandate that we buy insurance it is constitutional. This of course is your opinion as the SCOTUS did not rule on that, because it does not include said mandate.
b. However, it does include a fine/fee/tax or whatever you want to call that revenue shit the IRS collects from worker's income. Thus your argument amounts to nothing more than mental masturbation, since as we all know it was always a tax. Oddly a tax taken in the form of fine/penalty when you file and only if you have a rebate and did not buy insurance (rumors say). I'll wait to see it the tax forms before I'll believe much on this matter.
a. "The mandate "requires" we buy insurance." comes from a failure of reading and comprehension skills so prevalent in today's society. Here is a quote taken
out of context -
"The individual mandate was CongressÂ’s solution to these problems. By requiring that individuals purchase health insurance, the mandate prevents cost-shifting by those who would otherwise go without it." - CJ Roberts - The quote are Robert's words, but his words before saying the argument was invalid.
Here too (a), you are falling into rebtard's alternate reality where the mandate
is the shared responsibility payment penalty/tax. It is not. The penalty/tax is part of the mandate, the enforcement mechanism.
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Two arguments were ruled invalid: the mandate under the commerce clause, and the mandate under the necessary and proper clause.
CJ Roberts:
"Just as the individual mandate cannot be sustained as a law regulating the substantial effects of the failure to purchase health insurance, neither can it be upheld as a “necessary and proper” component of the insurance reforms. The commerce power thus does not authorize the mandate. Accord, post, at 4–16 (joint opinion of SCALIA, KENNEDY, THOMAS, and ALITO, JJ., dissenting)"
"That is not the end of the matter. Because the Commerce Clause does not support the individual mandate, it is necessary to turn to the Government’s second argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s enumerated power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl."
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"The GovernmentÂ’s tax power argument asks us to view the statute differently than we did in considering its commerce power theory. In making its Commerce Clause
argument, the Government defended the mandate as a regulation requiring individuals to purchase health insurance. The Government does not claim that the taxing power allows Congress to issue such a command. Instead, the Government asks us to read the mandate not as ordering individuals to buy insurance, but rather as imposing a
tax on those who do not buy that product.
The text of a statute can sometimes have more than one possible meaning. To take a familiar example, a law that reads “no vehicles in the park” might, or might not, ban bicycles in the park. And it is well established that if a statute has two possible meanings, one of which violates the Constitution, courts should adopt the meaning that does not do so. Justice Story said that 180 years ago: “No court ought, unless the terms of an act rendered it unavoidable, to give a construction to it which should involve a violation, however unintentional, of the constitution.” Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 448449 (1830). Justice Holmes made the same point a century later:
“[T]he rule is settled that as between two possible interpretations of a statute, by one of which it would be unconstitutional and by the other valid, our plain duty is to adopt that which will save the Act.” Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 148 (1927) (concurring opinion).
The most straightforward reading of the mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance."
"After all, it states that individuals “shall” maintain health insurance. 26 U. S. C.§5000A(a). Congress thought it could enact such a command under the Commerce Clause, and the Government primarily defended the law on that basis. But, for the reasons explained above, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power.
Under our precedent, it is therefore necessary to ask whether the Government’s alternative reading of the statute—that it only imposes a tax on those without insurance—is a reasonable one.
Under the mandate, if an individual does not maintain health insurance, the only consequence is that he must make an additional payment to the IRS when he pays his taxes. See §5000A(b). That, according to the Government, means the mandate can be regarded as establishing a condition—not owning health insurance—that triggers a tax—the required payment to the IRS.
Under that theory, the mandate is not a legal command to buy insurance. Rather, it makes going without insurance just another thing the Government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning income. And if the mandate is in effect just a tax hike on certain taxpayers who do not have health insurance, it may be within CongressÂ’s constitutional power to tax.
The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a “fairly possible” one. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932). As we have explained, “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648,
657 (1895). The Government asks us to interpret the mandate as imposing a tax, if it would otherwise violate the Constitution. Granting the Act the full measure of deference owed to federal statutes, it can be so read, for the reasons set forth below..."
Think they referred to it as a mob.
