43 Replies to “House Contempt vote reaction thread / open thread”

1. sdferr says:

   June 28, 2012 at 8:25 am

   And here I was expecting to spend my morning analyzing Ginsberg’s dissent. Shit.

2. McGehee says:

   June 28, 2012 at 8:27 am

   The House of Representatives remains the only place in Washington where we can hope to see any regard for the Constitution and the rule of law.

   We are, to coin a phrase, fucked.

3. sdferr says:

   June 28, 2012 at 8:31 am

   Link to the Court page where the opinion(s) will show up once Roberts finishes reading from the bench. I think.

4. zamoose says:

   June 28, 2012 at 8:54 am

   Wondering if #3 isn’t prescient. You think the Good Speaker got advance word of the SCotUS ruling and scheduled the vote precisely to cover his backside?

5. sdferr says:

   June 28, 2012 at 9:10 am

   J. Scalia, in dissent:

   The Court today decides to save a statute Congress did not write. It rules that what the statute declares to be a requirement with a penalty is instead an option subject to a tax. And it changes the intentionally coercive sanction of a total cut-off of Medicaid funds to a supposedly noncoercive cut-off of only the incremental funds that the Act makes available.

   The Court regards its strained statutory interpretation as judicial modesty. It is not. It amounts instead to a vast judicial overreaching. It creates a debilitated, inoperable version of health-care regulation that Congress did not enact and the public does not expect. It makes enactment of sensible health-care regulation more difficult, since Congress cannot start afresh but must take as its point of departure a jumble of now senseless provisions, provisions that certain interests favored under the Court’s new design will struggle to retain. And it leaves the public and the States to expend vast sums of money on requirements that may or may not survive the necessary congressional revision.

   The Court’s disposition, invented and atextual as it is,does not even have the merit of avoiding constitutional difficulties. It creates them. The holding that the Individual Mandate is a tax raises a difficult constitutional question (what is a direct tax?) that the Court resolves with inadequate deliberation. And the judgment on the Medicaid Expansion issue ushers in new federalism concerns and places an unaccustomed strain upon the Union. Those States that decline the Medicaid Expansion must subsidize, by the federal tax dollars taken from their citizens, vast grants to the States that accept the Medicaid Expansion. If that destabilizing political dynamic, so antagonistic to a harmonious Union, is to be introduced at all, it should be by Congress, not by the Judiciary.

   The values that should have determined our course today are caution, minimalism, and the understanding that the Federal Government is one of limited powers. But the Court’s ruling undermines those values at every turn. In the name of restraint, it overreaches. In the name of constitutional avoidance, it creates new constitutional questions. In the name of cooperative federalism, it undermines state sovereignty.

   The Constitution, though it dates from the founding of the Republic, has powerful meaning and vital relevance to our own times. The constitutional protections that this case involves are protections of structure. Structural protections—notably, the restraints imposed by federalism and separation of powers—are less romantic and have less obvious a connection to personal freedom than the provisions of the Bill of Rights or the Civil War Amendments. Hence they tend to be undervalued or even forgotten by our citizens. It should be the responsibility of the Court to teach otherwise, to remind our people that the Framers considered structural protections of freedom the most important ones, for which reason they alone were embodied in the original Constitution and not left to later amendment. The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our Government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty at peril. Today’s decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead, our judgment today has disregarded it.

   For the reasons here stated, we would find the Act invalid in its entirety. We respectfully dissent.

6. Pablo says:

   June 28, 2012 at 9:16 am

   Cantor: On July 11th, the House will once again vote to repeal ObamaCare. ?#healthcare? ?#fullrepeal

   I predict the contempt vote going forward. If Boehner squashes it, he can forget about being Speaker next term.

7. leigh says:

   June 28, 2012 at 9:25 am

   I think that’s what will happen, Pablo. The SCOTUS punted the ACA back to congress and essentially told them to do it right if they want it to work.

   I’m not seeing that this is a win for Team Obama. Calling a “right” a tax kind of takes the wind out of its sails. In these lean times, no one is going to rush to push through a new tax, imho.

   I don’t recall what the congress’ schedule is, but won’t this put the ACA mechanisms on the docket right before the election?

8. cranky-d says:

   June 28, 2012 at 10:11 am

   Boner can fuck off either way.

9. Pablo says:

   June 28, 2012 at 11:00 am

   Contempt debate is on.

10. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 11:02 am

    Thanks, Pablo.

11. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:27 pm

    Looks like the CBC is pitching its hissy fit right now.

12. Ernst Schreiber says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:30 pm

    I’m paying more attention to the hissy fit the market is throwing over the health care law tax.

13. Squid says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    I still want to see somebody with a firm spine and a sharp tongue explain how this proves that black Democrats don’t give two shits about their Hispanic neighbors, seeing as how they protest the idea that we should investigate those responsible for facilitating the murders of hundreds of Mexican citizens.

    Put these race-hustling scam artists on the defensive, for a change.

14. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:32 pm

    The resolution against Holder has been introduced to the floor for debate, debate which will be 50 mins equally divided between the majority and minority, Issa and Cummings controlling the time.

15. Ernst Schreiber says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:33 pm

    And leigh is mistaken. The court didn’t punt, the court deferred.

16. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm

    I think we mean the same thing, Ernst. If not, it wouldn’t be the first time I was wrong.

17. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    Just heard a radio report claiming the House Democrats intend to walk out of the chamber before the vote, save I suppose, those few among them who intend to vote to hold Holder in contempt. So they’re taking up the tactics of the Wisconsin Democrat Senators, though without the same substantive effect of quorum denial? They do work to substantiate their claims of ‘political theater’ by performing it themselves.

18. Squid says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    They do work to substantiate their claims of ‘political theater’ by performing it themselves.

    Yes, well, it’s all our fault for forcing them to do that.

19. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:24 pm

    The Democrats have more sand in their pockets than sits in the whole of the Sahara. I’d not recently listened to their dronings, giving such listening up on account of the futility of the exercise. Taking it up for the day has served as a perfect reminder.

20. cranky-d says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:24 pm

    Let them walk and show what whiny bitches they are. I don’t care.

    I’m with Jeff. I have no intention of trying to convince progressives why they’re wrong any more. I just want to stop them.

21. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    Sheesh. I haven’t heard the words “witch-hunt!” and “shameful!” so many times in one hour since the last time I saw a production of “The Crucible”.

    Nancy Pants is blathering away about how she doesn’t understand how this came to pass, blah blah blah.

    Go.Away.Nancy.

22. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    Bitch is still talking. How long are two minutes again?

23. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    Trey Gowdy inna house!

24. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:16 pm

    Said the caller (no, she really did): “There’s probably more schoolteachers die than border guards.”

25. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:19 pm

    Yeah, she did.

26. McGehee says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    Nancy Pants is blathering away about how she doesn’t understand how this came to pass, blah blah blah.

    They have to pass the contempt resolution so she can find out what’s in it.

27. Silver Whistle says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    The Ranking Minority Member and the Minority Leader are in some bizarre competition for the title of World’s Worst Liar.

    On the plus side, there appear to be around 14 Dems with a sense of integrity.

28. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    Interesting, though not to make a big deal of it, there are 14 Democrats voting against Holder so far in the incomplete vote. Now there are 17, as the number changes even as I write. But interesting evenso.

29. ThomasD says:

    June 28, 2012 at 2:58 pm

    Integrity? Or political self preservation?

30. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 3:00 pm

    I’m becoming concerned about the mental health of the D-words in congress. They seem to be trading in magical information that they know for a fact!!.

    Cummings is calling Issa a liar. Issa just told him to put up or shut up.

31. Silver Whistle says:

    June 28, 2012 at 3:02 pm

    Integrity? Or political self preservation?

    As it’s not the season of goodwill, maybe more of the latter, Thomas.

32. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 3:04 pm

    Haven’t seen the list yet, but I’d guess potentially some of both, even in one and the same guys maybe, depending.

33. BigBangHunter says:

    June 28, 2012 at 3:08 pm

    – At this point the Left has nothing else to lose, so they’ll go all in for teh stupid, and hope for a miracle.

34. BigBangHunter says:

    June 28, 2012 at 3:55 pm

    “Said the caller (no, she really did): “There’s probably more schoolteachers die than border guards.”

    – She also called him “Brian Taylor”

    (because she really really cares folks.)

35. Silver Whistle says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:09 pm

    The two Republican “no” votes were Reps. Steve LaTourette (Ohio) and Scott Rigell (Va.). Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.) was the only “present” vote from either party.

    Democrats voting for the resolution were Reps. Jason Altmire (Pa.), John Barrow (Ga.), Dan Boren (Okla.), Leonard Boswell (Iowa), Ben Chandler (Ky.), Mark Critz (Pa.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Kathy Hochul (N.Y.), Ron Kind (Wis.), Larry Kissell (N.C.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), Bill Owens (N.Y.), Collin Peterson (Minn.), Nick Rahall (W.Va.), Mike Ross (Ark.) and Tim Walz (Minn.).

    *

36. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:14 pm

    Thanks for digging that up Silver Whistle. Looking at the names, Boren jumps out to me because I think leigh said the other day that he’s leaving Congress, right? So he had a freebie of a sort. The others aren’t as well known to me but generally look to be in conservative districts.

37. Silver Whistle says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:24 pm

    I know you’ll be astonished to learn that not one of them is a member of the CBC, sdferr.

38. newrouter says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:28 pm

    Reps. Jason Altmire (Pa.), Mark Critz (Pa.),

    critz beat altmire in the primary . their 2 districts were merged in redistricting.

    12th Congressional District
    Republican Primary

    Candidate Votes Percent
    ROTHFUS, KEITH J. (REP)
    44,360 100.0%

    Democratic Primary

    Candidate Votes Percent
    CRITZ, MARK S. (DEM)

    32,384 51.2%
    ALTMIRE, JASON (DEM)

    30,895 48.8%

    http://www.electionreturns.state.pa.us/ElectionsInformation.aspx?FunctionID=13&ElectionID=45&OfficeID=11

39. sdferr says:

    June 28, 2012 at 4:30 pm

    newrouter, was Altmire the guy who replaced Murtha?

40. geoffb says:

    June 28, 2012 at 5:02 pm

    Critz was the one.

41. leigh says:

    June 28, 2012 at 5:20 pm

    sdferr, yes Boren is leaving when the term is up. We elected his replacement Tuesday. He wasn’t my guy and I can’t remember his name. Boren almost always votes with the Rs. So this isn’t really surprising.

42. newrouter says:

    June 28, 2012 at 6:20 pm

    critz i think was murtha’s chief of staff

43. newrouter says:

    June 28, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    i thought nixon’s the one. but then O!s the one because he won

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