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SCOTUS Exposes The ObamaCare Tax Lie
June 29, 2012
By Perry Fisher
The United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the power of words and rhetoric. Take a bow, Progressives. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.
But beware the Pyrrhic victory, dear friends on the left — the victory that cost too much. The Court has called you to account. This decision wraps and ribbons a gift to Republicans, the gift of a core issue that remains very unpopular with much of the voting public.
Lemons to lemonade, they say. This decision presents the opposition with a rallying cry. If intuition serves, the Supremes have re-irritated an already addled giant. Make hay when it shines, they say. Republicans can now, more than before, in unison, call for the repeal of the Mandate Tax on the grounds that it was sold as not a tax. It was sold as a bill of goods.
It was bait-and-switch, and the power-holders knew it all along. They knew all along that they had authority to mandate as a tax, but they also knew they couldn't call it a tax for getting re-elected reasons.
Which goes to account for the stunned progressive reaction to the challenge in the first place. How dare anyone question their authority?! But the Court today makes them look cowardly, for having the lust for their convictions but not the courage of them.
This interpretation shows the Court remonstrating Democrats, saying, "You passed a tax, by God — now you call it a tax."
The number-one national issue in the 2012 presidential election is economic, but as a cultural question, the scope, limits, and trustworthiness of government looms large and ominous to those who perpetrated the fraud of duplicity: disguising a wolfish tax in the sheep's clothing of moral imperative, just long enough to pass it. It's at least as unwise to scam voters as it is not nice to fool Mother Nature. "Repeal The Mandate Tax" has an appealing ring to it, in a bumper-sticker kind of way.
In effect, at first sight, the Court called a spade a spade. Essays and op-eds throughout the prologue to the courtroom drama in March advanced the idea that if Congress had mustered the courage to pass the mandate as the tax it is, it would have been well within its right to tax the people. But Congress didn't do that. They manipulated the language, and thereby the people, playing us for fools.
Upholding ACA as a tax bill steers the Court clear of the Commerce Clause. Of course, it would have been easier on conservatives for the Court to reject the mandate as well as the rest of ACA in the bargain, on Tenth Amendment grounds. But government of, by, and for the people isn't easy.
The Supremes have handed the issue up to the people to decide.
So ObamaCare is as legal as any other tax bill. Good enough. But now we can ask aloud, from now through Election Day, "Who said it wasn't a tax?" And, "Wasn't it the same people who said it was a tax after they passed it?" Accountability time is here.
