Will Republicans' First Tax Be For Healthcare Subsidies?

We are in the “home stretch” of the October 2014 Term of the United States Supreme Court. Otherwise not necessarily sensible, the Justices have persistently sought to be out of the District of Columbia before the real heat and humidity of a Washington summer take hold. So, by tradition, the Court makes best efforts to resolve all cases pending after argument by decisions and/or orders issued by the end of June.

A few landmark decisions remain to be made. One of them, King v. Burwell, presents the Court’s third visit with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as it has come to be called. In Burwell, a challenge was made to federal government funding of certain health care subsidies on the ground that the subsidies violated the express language of Obamacare. The essence of the case has to do with the Obama administration deciding to provide federally-funded subsidies for health care premiums for qualified subscribers who live in States that refused to set up and run a State health care exchange.

Using a carrot and stick approach, when the Congress under Democrat control and the President adopted Obamacare, they included a provision that would make health care premiums more affordable for lower income applicants by offering a subsidy – essentially a tax credit – when such insurance was purchased through an exchange set up by a State.

The States, by a broad majority, declined the temptation and refused to set up State exchanges. For residents in those States, the result was that they would not see subsidies that would make health insurance premiums affordable. Anticipating that costliness would result in low participation rates, the Obama administration unilaterally decided to “interpret” the law as though subsidies would be available to subscribers who obtained insurance through exchanges set up in the States if the States did not set them up.

Verbal gymnastics, at a minimum. Shameless hucksterism in service of the progressive ideology is the more accurate explanation of what they did. Now the Court will answer this question. When it does, it will either allow the hucksterism to continue. The lower court did so, so it might not surprise if they do. But, if the Court finds that the Obama administration's tortured misreading of the statute is incorrect, then there will be millions of Americans with suddenly unaffordable health care.

Of course, the progressives want Republicans to react with fear, and conclude that those that may lose health insurance will hold them accountable at the ballot box if they lose their coverage. For this reason, some Representatives are talking about creating a temporary fix by which those subsidies could continue. With that in mind, here's

A scenario to keep in mind:

Suppose the Supreme Court decision on Obamacare rejects the decision by the Obama administration to offer subsidies to qualified subscribers in States that did not set up their own exchanges.

Suppose Republicans in the House and Senate PANIC that they will bleed angry voters out of all orifices if THEY DON'T create a "TEMPORARY" fix extending to the administration the power to provide the subsidies.

What will have happened?

If that happens, then the REPUBLICAN CONGRESS will have IMPOSED A TAX ON YOU to pay for others' health insurance.

Remember:  The FIRST Obamacare decision by the Supreme Court only upheld the individual mandate because the Court concluded that the "shared responsibility payment" was, in fact, A TAX.

SHARE AND CARE:  Do the Republicans intend TO EXTEND A TAX imposed only by Democrats?

Tell your Republican Representatives and Senators that you will not vote for them again if they do so. 202-224-3121.

The Monster in the Senate Closet: The Filibuster

Imagine the innocence of childhood.  No fears of tomorrow.  No concerns about mortgages, taxes, illnesses, broken families.  Yet, even into the innocence of childhood, monsters will creep.  In my childhood, the boys in our family shared to large rooms in the basement of our Falls Church, Virginia home.

I love basements.  There is a moldering smell due to dampness.  There are crevices and hideaways to explore.  They are indoor playgrounds of manifold opportunities.

When the night comes, though, and the lights go down for bed time, a basement, just like a bedroom with a closet, becomes a place of great danger to a child's active imagination.  I am not ashamed to admit creeping from the bed to our little half-bath when I had to relieve myself.  Creeping along the basement walls and ducking low as I passed underneath the high set windows that were, as much as anything else, a means of ventilation, since they were at ground level outside the home.

Why did I creep so softly and gingerly?

For fear.

Fear of what was outside that might be looking in.

Others had the same experience of fear, but their childhood spent in bedrooms with closets, they feared the boogeyman in the closet. Movies are made in the horror genre that feature the child's bedroom closet because so many know that gripping fear of the closet.

Of course, we grow up and realize the true horror of what is in the closet:  handme down clothes, stinky socks, the odd spider, toys.  Nothing to fear. Now we laugh at our childhood fear.

The United States Senate has lived under the grip of a mortal terror for nearly two centuries.  Far too long, the Senate, a mature institution of popular sovereignty and governance, has laid about under the grip of that monster in the closet.  Oddly, at a time when we, who belong to the fellowship of former closet monster victims, are long past being held hostage to the imagined monster, the Senate continues to quake in fear and inaction.  And it appears that even removing the Democratic majority in the Senate will not snap the Senate out of the grip of its terrorized paralysis.

Here are a couple examples drawn from the headlines:

At the beginning of the new Congress, socialist Bernie Sanders summoned up the boogeyman in an effort to prevent adoption of the Keystone pipeline legislation:



Not to be outdone, New York Democrat Chuckie "Where's the Camera" Schumer and other Democrats threaten a filibuster of the separate funding legislation for the Department of Homeland Security:

During the tenure of George W. Bush, the Director of the nonprofit where I worked asked me what could be done about the filibuster being used by Democrats to block confirmation votes for Bush's judicial nominees.  There was, of course, talk about the "nuclear option" but what was that option, how would it work, how could it be given effect and why should it.  These were his questions to me.  That set me to the task of reviewing the Senate's filibuster practice, the Senate Rules governing that practice, and the political wisdom of that practice.

Based on my research and study, I concluded that the Senate, at any time a majority of those present and voting wished to do so, could amend the Senate Rules and eliminate the filibuster by the vote of a simple majority.  I also concluded that eliminating the filibuster was a sound political decision that our organization, The American Center for Law and Justice, should support.  I have not waivered from that view since then, even when the Senate filibuster allowed Republicans in the minority to hold the Senate hostage to their demands.  (While the document bears the names of two other ACLJ attorneys, it is solely the product of my research and writing).

Today, we are once again being terrorized.

Yes, terrorized.  Just as when parents soundly sleeping are startled awake by the nightmare screams of their child, whose horrified screams simply embody their fear of the monster in the closet.  Our body politic is disturbed by the pretended fear of Republicans that they will be held hostage to Democrats in minority through the device of the filibuster.

The problem for Republicans is that the monster in the closet no longer terrorizes those who were minding the legislative store during the last session of Congress.  Then, in a fit of pique, the Democrats finally pushed through a change to the Senate's ridiculous and time-honored practice. Harry Reid bullied those changes through to accommodate Obama's petulant demand for judicial confirmations and Republicans' skillful play of the filibuster rule to prevent votes on certain judges. Because Reid, via a simple parliamentary procedure, changed the filibuster rule and practice as applied to judicial and executive nomination votes, we now know a parliamentary truth:

A simple majority vote of the Senate -- taken at any time the Senate is in session -- can be used to amend the Rules of the Senate.  Such amendments may change even long practiced senatorial privileges as the filibuster.

Once you have gone into your closet with a matured judgment ... and with the lights on ... you begin to realize the infantilism in your night terrors.  You chuckle at how you were held in rigid paralysis by the certainty that a monster would leap out and take you wherever it is that closet monsters take their unwitting victims.  And so it is here.  We know that the only reason that Democrats can obstruct the Senate Republican majority is if the Senate Republican majority chooses to play terrorized child, captive to a rule that has no more merit or substance in this era than does the closet monster of our childhood in our adult lives.

While the horror genre provides entertainment, and perhaps even serves a psychological purpose of providing manageable doses of fear that we can conquer by confronting, it is a poor framework for the exercise of, or for preventing the exercise of, political will.  The Republicans should overthrow the vestiges of the filibuster, and legislate apace.

Why Having Two White Parents That Remain Together Through Life Is Sucky

The fact is, having one black parent is good enough to make Barack Obama America's first "black president."  So what that he didn't know his father?  So what that his father bedded and illegally wedded Barack's mother?  So what that his father's influence in his life is an after the fact construct for a book ghost written for a future president by a past domestic terrorist?  If a person of the general incompetence and sloth of Barack Obama had sought the presidency but had brought to it the pedigree of two Caucasian parents, Hillary Clinton would have been the Democratic nominee in 2008.  So, how is it that having a black father that one really never knew is better than having two Caucasian parents?

Because the guy with one black parent he never knew can get away with anything, because the danger is constantly present for his political opponents that confronting the man will be made to be the stuff of racial intimidation.

The Attorney General of the United States told us that, as to matters of race, we are a nation of cowards.  No.  Not being hyperbolic here, the words were "a nation of cowards."

Well, I suppose I think he's right.  We all knew the dangers associated with targeting a man with dark skin for public chastisement and political excoriation as soon as Clarence Thomas uttered the words "high tech lynching of a uppity black man."

So what else explains the refusal of John Boehner to institute impeachment proceedings against Obama?

Is it that Barack Obama has not committed acts justifying impeachment?

No.  Without effort, sitting here at my computer, I can identify a dozen or more grounds on which impeachment is justified.  Remember that among the key articles of impeachment against Richard M. Nixon was the abuse of using the IRS against political opponents.  This Administration's abuse of Tea Party and conservative organizations through the IRS is just the same kind of political abuse that warranted the article of impeachment against Nixon.  The naked criminality of destroying and "losing" the hard drives of seven involved IRS computers is self-evident.

Is it that the Republicans in the House would be committing electoral suicide in a year they had hoped to gain House seats, and perhaps control of the Senate?

Well now, that's entirely possible.  It is possible that by doing their constitutionally sworn duty they would be risking electoral success in November.  I guess I think that it is that very concern that proves the truth of Holder's race cowardice indictment of the Nation.  If the things done by Obama had been done by a man with two Caucasian parents, rather than just one, there is little doubt that severe consequences, likely impeachment, would have long since followed.

The thing is, and I do not know the answer to this question, if the standing of the Congress is so very low while it has done so very little to protect this Nation from this Administration, will it cause further damage to impeach the President, or, instead, will impeachment actions by the House lead the People to rise in hope that this long national nightmare is over?

We won't know.

As much as Obama likely despises Clarence Thomas because of the Justice's principled constitutional conservatism, there's little doubt in my mind that the House would have to be prepared to deal with an echo of Thomas' "high tech lynching of an uppity black man" allegation.  And, that, my friends, is why I think that Holder, like a broken clock, is proved right.

No principled constitutionalist of my ken thinks that this President cannot be properly made the subject of Articles of Impeachment.  Without regard to the wisdom of any particular effort at impeachment, there is no question that the House has the power to impeach, a power sufficiently broad that it might impeach a President for putting mayo on a Reuben.  So we are left to the COWARDICE of the Republicans in the House, who, for fear that they might be portrayed as conducting a "high tech lynching" of Obama, are refusing to do their duty.

Democratic Walruses, Republican Carpenters, and Sheeple Oysters

As I watch Disney's 1951 classic, Alice in Wonderland, I cannot avoid the clear parallel between the Walrus and the Carpenter, and our two party system.  We sit in our oyster beds, living our lives, getting along as best we can. 

Along comes the oafish pair, the Walrus and the Carpenter.  We are, in turn, teased into the parade following them along, straight into the Carpenter's makeshift seafood house.  The only question is are we eaten alive by the Walrus, or by the Carpenter?

The Walrus and the Carpenter, Modestly Updated:


The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.

"O Voters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."

The eldest Voter looked at him,
But never a word he said:
The eldest Voter winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head--
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the voter-bed.

But four young Voters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat--
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.

Four other Voters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more, and more, and more--
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Voters stood
And waited in a row.

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

"But wait a bit," the Voters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.

"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed--
Now if you're ready, Voters dear,
We can begin to feed."

"But not on us!" the Voters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said.
"Do you admire the view?

"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice:
I wish you were not quite so deaf--
I've had to ask you twice!"

"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick,
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Voters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.