ObamaCare — Yea or Nay?
Today’s the day.
10 AM EDT is when SCOTUS starts to do its thing.
Does Obama already know? Some theorize that he does, and if so, the news isn’t good for his signature law.
But it’s quite possible that the law will be upheld, instead — as Ann Althouse said last week, there are good arguments on each side.
Some precedents lead one towards declaring the mandate constitutional; taking a step back and looking at the constitution as a whole leads one towards declaring it ultra vires.
In a very real sense, this is a case of first impression — do the enumerated powers of the United States Congress allow it to require one to buy a service? (Well, some of them do. The Militia Power allows the Congress to require one to buy a rifle. But this is a Commerce Clause case.)
This will be an interesting day, either way.
More to come later on this post…
Update, 10:25 AM EDT: So, the right held together on the Commerce Clause reading, but the mandate is saved as an exercise of the taxation authority.
Chief Justice Roberts got together with the four liberal justices to uphold ObamaCare on that basis.
Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.
Very Supreme Court of Canada-like move.
Update, 10:45 AM EDT: Here’s the full judgment.
Final update, noon: If it’s a tax, it can be taken out by reconciliation with fifty votes in the Senate.
Politically, the GOP has a red-meat issue & a plausible path to repeal with 50 votes in the Senate & the presidency.
That’s not nothing. It’s not much today, but it’s not nothing. And SCOTUS did put real limits on the federal commerce power.
My take on this morning can be seen in video.
Children of the 1980s will understand.
Coda: Watch President Obama lie to the American people.
He lied because he failed to see see the future when the head of another branch of government decided something… masterful.
Biggest tax hiker of the modern era.
There’s only two things in the way of “repeal through reconciliation.”
First, the GOP howled like fucking girls when the Democrats passed the bill through reconciliation. I remember words like “tyranny” being used rather liberally. The optics of employing the same tyranny is going to be problematic, assuming the GOP even wins the Senate, which it probably won’t,
More problematic still is The Byrd Rule, which specifically denies the use of reconciliation to cut taxes unless those cuts are offset by other revenue, I should also note that the Byrd Rule was first adopted by a Republican Senate in Ye Olde Days of Reagan.
As I’ve noted at my place, this is where the Republicans fuck themselves. They want to keep the popular, yet extraordinarily expensive, goodies in the PPACA and get rid of the means of actually paying for it. If you think they can survive campaigning on such blatant fiscal irresponsibility, you’re kidding yourself.
I don’t like the individual mandate any more than you do, but it’s hardly a coincidence that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney both looked at the problem of universal coverage and came to the same conclusion.
The GOP probably is going to win the Senate. Dems are defending 23 seats of 33 up for a vote, and Republicans only need to net 4 of them.
Re mandates and whatnot — do them at the state level. Laboratory of federalism, etc. Do a one-page repeal of this at the federal level. (Do they have the discipline to do a one-page repeal? Who knows.)
No, they don’t have the discipline. Both Romney and the House leadership have pledged to keep all of the popular goodies in the PPACA, They’ve only said that they’re going to repeal the means of paying for them.
There’s no way of doing that in a one-page bill. And without offsets, getting around the Byrd Rule is the Senate is going to be almost impossible, so reconciliation is out.
If they say that they’re going to do a clean repeal and legislate the goodies back in later, they’re going to be asked how they intend to pay for that, and they have no plausible answer.
As of right now, I can’t see where the four seats needed for Republican Senate control are. It was a lot more likely to happen before Olympia Snowe was finally fed up, but her quitting made things infinitely more difficult.
By my reading of the map, the clearest pick-up is Nelson’s seat in Nebraska, but Bob Kerrey might just pull that one out. Nelson’s Florida seat is probably going to be tight, as is McCaskill’s in Missouri but most of the rest are in pretty safe states. I have no faith in Linda McMahon to win anything in Connecticutt, and she’s the likely nominee. Shays could win, but the wrestling broad fucked up a sure thing once already.
Unless things significantly change, or Romney wins by a huge margin, I’d say the GOP picks up two in the Senate, three if they have a really good night.
Well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2012
I see these Dem-held seats as flippable:
FL, MO, MT, NE, ND, OH, VA, WV, WI.
In a very good year, could also see MI and HI. MI is moving red along with the rest of the Rust Belt, HI has a good candidate in Governor Lingle.
There’ll be f***-ups and bad candidates, but I can easily see five or six going Republican even if Romney doesn’t win at the top of the ticket.
That was the wiki I was looking at when writing my earlier comment.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong, necessarily, but I tend to be very conservative with my predictions. And it seems that your prediction relies on absolutely everything going right and a near perfect campaign across the country, and I’m not seeing that. The GOP should be walking away with a bunch of these races, but they just aren’t.
I forgot that Thompson was running in Wisconsin. If he can manage to get himself the nomination without the Tea Party fucking it up, I think that his chances of winning the general are better than even. But the voters might use the Senate seat as a way to spank Walker without recalling him.
The fact that so many Republican governors are so unpopular is a wild card this year, and that might even skew the presidential. Unless Scott gets tossed in the trunk of a car soon, he might cost Romney Florida and the election.Were anybody but Mack the nominee, I would have completely written the seat of for the Republicans.
Kasich is toxic in Ohio and Brown remains fairly formidable. Klobuchar isn’t going to lose Minnesota to a Ron Paul supporter and Manchin isn’t going to lose to anybody in West Virginia. Raese is a four-time loser and Manchin whipped his ass just two years ago. He’s never won a state wide race by less than ten points and often wins by as much as thirty. Manchin might even be safer that Dianne Feinstein.
The Michigan party is weird in that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Concentrated in Oakland County, it tends to be well to the right of the state and, unless it’s a wave year (which this isn’t) it gets swamped by Wayne and Washtenaw Counties. Barring a disaster, Stabenow’s safe, which is too bad because she’s a moron.
From what I’ve read, Hawaii seems to still lean Democrat, which actually surprises me somewhat.I suspect the Virginia seat will go whichever way the top of the ticket does, and Romney’s not doing as well there as he should be.
I think that you’re being overly optimistic when the numbers and the candidates just aren’t there to support it. I could be wrong, but I’m not getting that vibe yet.
Yesterday’s Court ruling might change the dynamics, but I think it’s more likely to hurt than help in the fall.