Will The ObamaCare Tax Be The Death Knell For This Garbage Legislation. It Is Illegal Since The Bill Originated In The Senate And Not The House!

JUDGES HIT WITH 'SILVER BULLET' TO KILL OBAMACARE

Full D.C. Circuit shown cardinal flaw in Obama's signature law

Published: 16 hours ago

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The full District of Columbia appeals court is being asked to rule on a case against Obamacare after a three-judge panel decided the U.S. Senate can initiate a tax law, even though the U.S. Constitution’s requires that all such measures originate in the U.S. House.

WND reported two months ago when Judge Judith Rogers reasoned for the three-judge panel that if the aim of Obamacare is to force people to buy government-approved health insurance, the hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases are incidental and allowable.

But in a petition for a hearing before the full court, the Pacific Legal Foundation said the issue is too important to drop.

The case targets the individual mandate payments, which already were declared by the U.S. Supreme Court to be a “tax.” It argues the legislation creating the payments started in the Senate, not the House, as required by Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution.

“Because the issues in this case are so important for all Americans, PLF has a responsibility to seek review by the full D.C. Circuit, and, ultimately, by the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary,” said PLF Principal Attorney Paul J. Beard II. “Not only is everyone affected by Obamacare and its tax and regulatory burden, but we all have a stake in the integrity of the Constitution and its procedural protections for taxpayers.”

He continued: “The Founders had good reason for vesting the power to launch taxes with the House. They knew the power to tax can be abused, and they wanted to limit that danger by giving the primary authority to the chamber closest to the people. Unfortunately, the three-judge panel that ruled against PLF’s Obamacare challenge has undermined that protection for the public by announcing a disturbing new exception to it.”

The court panel said if the “main object” of a tax is something other than raising revenue, that part of the Constitution doesn’t apply.

Beard said the”loophole” allows all sorts of taxes that “could be given a pass from having to start in the House.”

“After all, many taxes have purposes other than simply to raise revenue. Cigarette taxes, for example, are designed, also, to affect behavior.”

WND reported PLF attorney Timothy Sandefur said he expects the case will end up in the Supreme Court.

“PLF’s challenge to Obamacare involves fundamental constitutional principles and protections for all taxpayers, and for everyone who is covered by the tax and regulatory burdens of Obamacare,” he said. “Americans may not be subjected to new taxes by the federal government if those taxes [don't] start in the House, the chamber closest to the people. That’s the principle underlying our lawsuit, and it’s so basic to our constitutional framework that the case ultimately deserves a judgment by the nation’s highest court.”

The case was filed by Matt Sissel, a small-business owner who wants to pay medical expenses on his own and has financial, philosophical and constitutional objections to being ordered to purchase a health plan he does not need or want.

His attorneys argue the Constitution requires all tax bills in Congress to begin in the House of Representatives. They charge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., manipulated the legislation that eventually gave America Obamacare by taking the bill number for an innocuous veterans housing program that had been approved by the House, pasting it on the front of thousands of pages of Obamacare legislation and voting on it.

That means, Sissel argues, the entire law was adopted unconstitutionally and should be canceled, including its $800 billion in taxes.

The argument essentially makes the Constitution itself a silver bullet to kill Obamacare.

See Sissel:

The first case to the high court challenging the Obamacare mandate cited the Commerce Clause. But the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 the law was a tax and, therefore, constitutional.

In its second decision regarding Obamacare, the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court ruled the government cannot force company owners to violate their faith by funding abortion-causing drugs in employee insurance plans.

Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services says Obamacare was “not enacted in compliance with constitutional procedures for raising taxes,” the plaintiff argues.

Sissel said: “I’m in this case to defend freedom and the Constitution. I strongly believe that I should be free – and all Americans should be free – to decide how to provide for our medical needs and not be forced to purchase a federally dictated health plan. I’m very concerned about Congress ignoring the constitutional road map for enacting taxes, because those procedures are there for a purpose – to protect our freedom.”

In a video about the case, PLF attorney Todd Gaziano said the Senate violated the Constitution in its work on Obamacare, and so the law should be abandoned.

Conservative commentator George Will wrote about the case under the headline “Obamacare’s doom”:

In June 2012, a Supreme Court majority accepted a, shall we say, creative reading of the ACA by Chief Justice John Roberts. The court held that the penalty, which the ACA repeatedly calls a penalty, is really just a tax on the activity – actually, the nonactivity – of not purchasing insurance. The individual mandate is not, the court held, a command but merely the definition of a condition that can be taxed. The tax is mild enough to be semi-voluntary; individuals are free to choose whether or not to commit the inactivity that triggers the tax.

The “exaction” – Roberts’s word – “looks,” he laconically said, “like a tax in many respects.” It is collected by the IRS, and the proceeds go to the Treasury for the general operations of the federal government, not to fund a particular program. This surely makes the ACA a revenue measure.

Did it, however, originate in the House? Of course not.

Will argued that the Senate has every right to amend a House bill, but regarding whether a change actually is an “amendment,” the case law establishes that the issue must be “germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill.”

Earlier, dozens of members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed on to the case, claiming the Senate didn’t have the authority to pass the bill.

They argued taxes only can originate with the House, the representatives closest to the American people.

The requirement is so important, according to the members of Congress, that the Constitution never would have been adopted without it.

According to a brief dozens of House members have filed in the case, the principle “behind the Origination Clause – sometimes phrased as ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ – was the moral justification for our War of Independence.”

“With this war for freedom and liberty in mind, the Origination Clause of our Constitution was written; and without it at the core of the ‘Great Compromise of 1787,’ the 13 original states would never have agreed to ratify the Constitution,” the brief states.

“The primary dividing issue between the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was the question of how to resolve the method of representation in the upper chamber. The small states preferred to retain the equal representation they had enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation, while the large states wanted to shift the national legislature to a proportional representation of the American population. No disagreement threatened the success of the convention and the new Constitution more than this one. After a month of heated debate and threats of secession, the delegates finally agreed to the Great Compromise of 1787; a bicameral legislature with equal representation of states in the upper branch, and proportional representation of the nation in the lower branch. That Great Compromise was only made possible by agreement of both sides to restrict the upper branch from originating money bills.”

It continues: “The power of the purse was unquestionably reposed in the People’s House, and it has remained in that chamber throughout our history. If the Senate can introduce the largest tax increase in American history by simply peeling off the House number from a six-page unrelated bill which does not raise taxes and pasting it on the ‘Senate Health Care Bill’ and then claim with a straight face that the resulting bill originated in the House, in explicit contravention of the supreme law of the land, then the American ‘rule of law’ has become no rule at all.”

The brief was filed by attorneys representing Reps. Trent Franks, Michele Bachmann, Joe Barton, Kerry L. Bentivolio, Marsha Blackburn, Jim Bridenstine, Mo Brooks, K. Michael Conaway, Steve Chabot, Jeff Duncan, John J. Duncan Jr., John Fleming, Bob Gibbs, Louie Gohmert, Andy Harris, Tim Huelskamp, Walter B. Jones Jr., Steve King, Doug Lamborn, Doug LaMalfa, Bob Latta, Thomas Massie, Mark Meadows, Randy Neugebauer, Steve Pearce, Robert Pittenger, Trey Radel, David P. Roe, Todd Rokita, Matt Salmon, Mark Sanford, David Schweikert, Marlin A. Stutzman, Lee Terry, Tim Walberg, Randy K. Weber Sr., Brad R. Wenstrup, Lynn A. Westmoreland, Rob Wittman and Ted S. Yoho.

Their argument noted that at the 1787 convention, George Mason explained why the Senate was not allowed to raise taxes.

“The Senate did not represent the people, but the states in their political character. It was improper therefore that it should tax the people … Again, the Senate is not like the H. of Representatives chosen frequently and obliged to return frequently among the people. They are chosen by the Sts for 6 years, will probably settle themselves at the seat of Govt. will pursue schemes for their aggrandizement – will be able by weary[ing] out the H. of Reps. and taking advantage of their impatience at the close of a long session, to extort measures for that purpose.”

U.S. senators originally were selected by state legislatures, not a direct vote of the people. The law was changed by the 17th Amendment in 1913.

The reason for the appeal:

The newly filed brief explains: “The panel decision all but concedes that its new test – and the broad exemption from Origination Clause review it creates for many revenue-raising bills – has never been endorsed by the Supreme Court. The panel’s view seems to be that, until the Supreme Court expressly instructs otherwise, courts can continue to presume against applying the Origination Clause – even to revenue-raising taxes like the shared responsibility payment.”