Patterico reports that the shenanigans that were used to
a) pass the Obamacare bill and
b) get it through the supreme court
You see, in order to get the bill passed, they took a bill passed by the senate, then changed the entire thing, then passed it in the house. The bill (even though it was completely different) was “deemed” to have passed the senate even though it clearly had not. But that’s not the issue.
It seems that the bill effectively now originated in the Senate. Now, in order to get the bill passed by the Supreme Court, Obama argued that the penalty was actually a tax and hence legal.
See, the US federal government actually has only a few ways in which it can make a nationwide regulation. One is regulating commerce between the states, and that was rejected as a justification by the SC since accepting it would have pretty much rendered the constitution meaningless (not that liberals were worried by that). Another is tax, and even though it was patently not a tax, the penalty charged to people without insurance was called a tax to get it cleared with the SC.
But under the constitution, tax bills have to originate with the house.
And this one didn’t.
In short, if Obamacare is really constitutional*, I’m a deep-fried chicken.
Anyway, go have a read. This particular train-wreck-of-a-law’s got a ways to go yet.
(*And by this I mean, objectively within the boundaries of federal government power set by the original founders of the United States – not “found constitutional by a majority of a panel of judges selected for their ideology”)
Something should go here, maybe later. 