It’s a penalty. Duh.
According to press reports, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One that the penalty was not a tax but a penalty.
“It’s a penalty, because you have a choice. You don’t have a choice to pay your taxes, right,” Carney is quoted as saying by Yahoo News.
In a 5-4 ruling issued just one day before, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that the mandate was not a penalty and was, in fact, a tax.
“The Affordable Care Act’s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may reasonably be characterized as a tax,” Roberts wrote.
Roberts said that the mandate “makes going without insurance just another thing the government taxes, like buying gasoline or earning an income.”
Nevertheless, Carney said that it was not a “broad-based tax,” arguing that few Americans will pay it.
See? It’s not a tax because it doesn’t really, you know, function as a broad-based tax, though it does function as a taxing function, which is why it’s constitutional, functionally speaking.
Making the individual mandate at the heart of this historic caring legislation a deliciously non-broad-based and rarely required penalty that is legally speaking a tax, but practically speaking not a tax at all.
Thanks for passing it though, Mr federalist! Doing so may have just saved the union from our shrieking tantrums. Which is far more important than saving some old document nobody much pays any attention to anymore anyway, it being, like, a hundred years old and stuff.
Plus, now we have a spanking new Wickard to fuck around with!
The broccoli mandate?
In fairness Jeff, conservatives didn’t pass anything. Not in Congress and not in yesterday’s ruling.
Some putative conservatives are trying to give a pass to the putatively conservative Chief Justice —because they play for the same team or something.
”
Justice Roberts refused to answer any questions concerning his recent dicision on the health care bill, but said, before leaving for a vacation trip overseas, “I hope what we did will be remembered for protecting the rights of all Americans”.
– And then he got out of Dodge.
– Are there any flesh and blood living breathing actual human beings running our government anymore, or have they all been replaced by life-sized ventriloquists dummies, manipulated by the unseen hand of an army of proggressive assholes?
ventriloquists
– Must be an echo in here.
I would have legitimized the shit out of the court by taking a great opportunity to overturn 60+ years of bad decisions that always seem to enslave us a little bit more each time… mostly for our own good.
ventriloquists
But I don’t give a rat’s nutsack what Nancy Pelosi thinks of me.
“You can call it what you want, but it is affecting one percent of the population.”
Riiiight. Because the manacles are clapped on somebody else, I’m supposed to ignore the fact that they have a set for me sitting in the next room.
Slavery is freedom Squid.
The freedom to go sit on a beach and think deep thoughts about important matters regarding serious things. The freedom to take a class or learn a craft, to go exploring until you find yourself.
And all without having to worry about health care!
Until your 26 and have to start paying the tax.
Roberts may as well go ahead and finish off the Court’s reputation then. Concert with the dissenters to revisit the decision, agree with Carney and throw the damn thing out altogether.
C’mon John, wanna be famous?
Until you’re 26 and have to start paying the tax.
Carousel! Carousel!
Renew! Renew!
Nancy P: “You have to enter the Carousel to see what’s in it.”
What the hell are you two Metro area morons talking about?
“What the hell are you two Metro area morons talking about?'”
Roberts’ Run, surely.
I was wondering if that was what it was from. Never read the book and haven’t seen the movie in 30 years maybe.
If it’s a tax, then it wasn’t legitimate to challenge it in court before anyone had to pay it; ergo, SCOTUS had no business ruling on it.
WIN!
It’s a dystopian society where everybody lives a totally hedonistic lifestyle with no regard for the future because, well, there isn’t one. No bearing at all on today’s society, of course. Could never happen here!
I just hope I get a nekkid Jenny Agutter dropping in at my place before the end.
I’m off to the pub. I just hope that when those damned British expat socialists start antagonizing me, I can think of Jenny and be calmed.
– Somehow I doubt thinking of a nakid Jenny is going to calm you Squid.
– Thats what I thoudft too Di, but Roberts dodged that by referring to it as a “penalty” for any case that he couldn’t cover with his other idiotic statements. Win/win.