Tea Party Alert–Tax Revolt–March On Washington D.C.–Tea Party–July 4, 2012–Protest The Supreme Court Obamacare Decision–Repeal Obamacare’s Massive Tax Increase!–Economy Goes Into Recession–Unemployment Skyrockets–Obama Lied–The Economy Died–Videos

Posted on June 28, 2012. Filed under: Blogroll, Business, College, Communications, Economics, Education, Employment, Fiscal Policy, Law, liberty, Life, Links, media, People, Philosophy, Politics, Public Sector, Raves, Regulations, Tax Policy, Taxes, Unemployment, Unions, Video, Wisdom | Tags: Harvard Law School, Health Care, John Roberts, March on Washington D.C., Obamacare, President Barack Obama, Socialism, Supreme Court Decision on Obamacare, Tea Party |

EXPANDED UPDATED: July 5, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 80: June 28, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 79: June 27, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 78: June 20, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 77: June 13, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 76: June 6, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 75: May 30, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 74: May 21, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 73: May 9, 2012

Pronk Pops Show 72: May 2, 2012

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Segment 0: Tea Party Alert–Tax Revolt–March On Washington D.C.–Tea Party–July 4, 2012–Protest The Supreme Court Obamacare Decision–Repeal Obamacare’s Massive Tax Increase!–Economy Goes Into Recession–Unemployment Skyrockets–Obama Lied–The Economy Died–Videos

“There is really no essential difference between the unlimited power of the democratic state and the unlimited power of the autocrat.”

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, pages 64-65

The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism.”

Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom, page 219

“Upon the supposition, that the bank is constitutionally created, this is the  only question; and this question seems answered, as soon as it is stated. If the  states may tax the bank, to what extent shall they tax it, and where shall they  stop? An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to  destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no  property can bear taxation. A question of constitutional power can hardly be  made to depend on a question of more or less. If the states may tax, they have  no limit but their discretion; and the bank, therefore, must depend on the  discretion of the state governments for its existence. This consequence is  inevitable. The object in laying this tax, may have been revenue to the state.  In the next case, the object may be to expel the bank from the state; but how is  this object to be ascertained, or who is to judge of the motives of legislative  acts?”

McCulloch v. Maryland, (1819),Chief Justice John Marshall 

Full Text of Supreme Court Decision

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/scotus_opinion_on_ACA_from_msnbc.com.pdf

“

Chief Justice John Roberts Comes Out of The Progressive Closet

ONE FOR THE TEAM 

A progressive Republican President George W. Bush appointed another progressive Republican to be Chief Justice– John Roberts.

The result of this decision is the Affordable Care Act is declared Constitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States!

A progressive Democratic President Barack Obama lead the Democratic Party in passing the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare. The Constitutional authority cited for the passage of the bill was the commerce clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate commerce. Both Obama and the Democratic Party deliberately did not use their taxing powers under the Constitution as their authority for passing the bill.

Obama Goes Toe-To-Toe With Stephanopoulos On “Tax Increases”

The reason for not using the Congress’ taxing authority was Obamacare would never had passed for it would have been viewed as one of the biggest increases in taxes in the history of the United States. Just remember candidate Obama’s promise, now a big lie, to never increase the taxes of Americans earning less than $250,000:

President Obama’s Pledge Never to Raise Taxes on Anyone Making Less Than $250,000 a Year

Both the majority and dissenting decisions clearly state that the commerce clause cannot be used to justify Obamacare or more specifically the mandate that requires individuals to purchase health insurance. The mandate is clearly unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Roberts was joined by the four progressive or liberal justices in declaring Obamacare Constitutional because it was a tax and Congress has the power to tax under the Constitution.

Instead of simply declaring the act unconstitutional for exceeding their powers under the Commerce clause, the majority of the justices said correctly that the act is a tax, even though the bill was not written as a tax.

While it is clearly the function of the Supreme Court to review acts of Congress and decide whether an act is Constitutional or unconstitutional, it is decidedly not the function of the Supreme Court to legislate by in effect rewriting the act and giving it the correct justification.

The act should have been declared unconstitutional and sent back to Congress for them to rewrite the act and use their taxing powers as justification.

If this had been done, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act would never had been passed–it would have been repealed.

The majority of the American people never asked for Obamacare.

Today at least 2 out of 3 Americans want the repeal of Obamacare.

Chief Justice Roberts should have joined the dissenting justices in a 5 to 4 decision to rule that Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because Congress exceeded its authority or powers under the commerce clause.

This would have ended Obamacare, a bill that at least 2 out of 3 Americans do not want and cannot afford.

Instead, Chief Justice has come out of the closet and revealed that he is really a progressive Republican that talks conservative but acts progressive.

Shame on Justice Roberts and the justices that joined him for exceeding their own authority and the will of the American people.

While the majority of the American people consider themselves conservative, both the Democratic and Republican parties are controlled by progressives that want the government to intervene in the economy at home and other nations abroad.

Beware of progressives Republicans that talk conservative to get elected and once elected act like progressives.

Mitt Romney reacts to the health care ruling

 Since both Obama and Romney have a record of flip flopping, I suggest American follow the advice of the late President Reagan.

Trust but verify

Not a Dime in Tax Increase for Those Earning Less than $250,000

Health Care: Mitt Romney flip-flops on Health Care

Romney: Mass. Health Law Differs From Obama’s

ObamaCare is RomneyCare 2.0 

Remember, it was another Progressive Republican President, George H.W. Bush, who said, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

George H. W. Bush

Trust but verify.

Obamacare is a tax and as such should have originated in the House of Representatives, the people’s house, and it did not.

The reason is simple, the bill that eventually become Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act, would have been one of the largest taxes increases in United States history and would have clearly broken Obama’s promise not to increase taxes on anyone making less than $250,00.

Hence Obama’s repeated assertion of the big lie that Obamacare orthe Affordable Care Act is not a tax.

Busted: Audio of Obama Lawyer Arguing Obamacare Is a Tax

Rush Limbaugh on fighting to defeat Obamacare

Coburn on how ACA “sovietizes” health care 

The American people know a liar when they hear him.

The American people knew all along  that Obamacare was a massive tax increase, especially on young.

They did not need a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with a Harvard Law degree to point out the obvious.

Obamacare generates signficant uncertainty for businesses–the wealth, income and job creators of America.

Businesses do not know what the cost of their employee group health care insurance will be in future years.

Nor do businesses know what taxes they will paying in the future years.

This massive uncertainty as to the cost of doing business results in lower economic growth and reducing hiring of new employees.

The economic consequences of the passage of Obamacare have been unemployment rates exceeding 8 percent for 42 months and most likely the entire Obama administration.

As the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall said in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, “An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to  destroy.”

Chief Justice John Roberts is simply not in the same league as Chief Justice Marshall.

Roberts originally was going to vote with the dissenting justices and if he did, Obamacare would have been declared unconstitutional.

Inside Justice Roberts’ health care decision

This would have dramatically reduce business uncertainty.

Instead, he came out of the progressive closet and sided with the four progressive justices.

Obamacare is wrecking the economy, destroying jobs and killing the American dream.

Outrage Over Judicial Activism and Obamacare

The vast majority of the American people never wanted Obamacare.

Yet a small elite of progressive Harvard Law graduates are telling the American people that they must buy something that do not want and many cannot afford.

The time for action is now.

Obamacare is a massively huge tax increase and an assault on the consumer sovereignty of the American people

Rush Limbaugh on fighting to defeat Obamacare

March on Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2012!

Washington Tea Party!

The time is now for Americans all across this nation to have tea parties in protest of Obamacare and massive unbalance budgets that will add more than $5 trillion or $5,000 billion in the four-year of the Obama administration.

WHY DON’T YOU MIND MY OWN BUSINESS? 

Repeal Obamacare!

Background Articles and Videos

3 Reasons to End Obamacare Before it Begins!

Mark Meckler on the Tea Party Movement

Judge Napolitano: “Individual Mandate Most Bizarre Tax in the History of the Country”

Supreme Court Upholds Obamacare – Conservative Reaction Absurd

Obama reacts to health care supreme court ruling. 6/28/12

Obama Tax Promises

Obama on single payer health insurance

Obama will cut deficit in half FEB 2009

If You Like Your Health Care Plan You Can’t Keep It!

Healthcare Summit Reveals Industry Movement Independent of Reform

Boehner: We Must Repeal ObamaCare In Its Entirety #4jobs

Who knew individual mandate was a tax? NOT Obama!

CNBC: Senator Rubio Comments on Supreme Court’s Decision on ObamaCare

The Meaning of Independence Day – Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights

Obamacare and the Supreme Court with Richard Epstein and John Yoo

Richard Epstein on Barack Obama, his former Chicago Law Colleague

Obamacare Ruling May Be Bad News For Stressed Tax Code

Howard Gleckman, Contributor

“…Because the High Court found that the penalty for not having coverage is a tax and not a fee or a banana, it ruled Congress has the constitutional authority to impose such a levy. In effect, the 5-4 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts concluded that Congress can tax you for failing to acquire insurance. Thus, the mandate as created by the ACA is constitutional.

But the Court rejected the White House’s main legal argument—that Congress has the authority under the Commerce Clause to require people to get insurance. It will be interesting to see how legal scholars read this in the coming weeks: Is the Court saying that tax policy is the only tool Congress has to enact certain social welfare programs? If so, it would put an already-stressed tax code under even greater pressure.

The ACA includes a number of tax provisions—only a few of which are related to insurance reform.

Among them:

The tax on those who don’t have health insurance. The key to the individual mandate, this provision would penalize those who do not have insurance starting in 2014. The penalty begins at $95 and phases up to a maximum of $695 or 2.5 percent of income by 2016.

Subsidies for buyers. These subsidies are aimed at helping low-income households purchase individual insurance through the health exchanges created by the law. The subsidies are effectively refundable tax credits managed by the Internal Revenue Service.

Small business tax credits. These subsidies, initially up to 35 percent of an employer’s premium contribution, are already in effect. The subsidy gradually phases out as the firm’s average wage and the number of its employees increase.

Medicare payroll tax. Starting in 2013, the ACA raises the Medicare Part A payroll tax by 0.9 percent for those making $200,000 or more (couples making $250,000).

Taxes on unearned income. The law also imposes a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income and other unearned income for wealthy households, also starting in 2013.

Increasing the threshold for itemized medical expenses. Today, taxpayers can deduct medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. The ACA raises that threshold to 10 percent beginning next year.

Taxing high-value employer-sponsored health plans. Technically imposed on insurers, the law sets an excise tax on individual coverage that exceeds $10,200 or family coverage of more than $27,500. The levy, effective beginning in 2018, is equal to 40 percent of the premiums that exceed these thresholds. Because it is indexed by the rate of the consumer price index (which rises more slowly than medical costs), the tax will gradually apply to less generous policies.

Other revenue raisers. The law includes a number of other minor taxes intended to help pay for the health coverage expansion. These include new penalties on Health Savings Accounts, limits on Flexible Savings Accounts, and an excise tax on indoor tanning salons.

The Court upheld all of these taxes with the rest of the law (except for a requirement that states expand their Medicaid coverage for the working poor).

The political fate of the ACA remains to be seen, of course. But the Supreme Court has at least settled the dispute over whether it is constitutional. …”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2012/06/28/obamacare-ruling-may-be-bad-news-for-stressed-tax-code/

A Vast New Taxing Power

The Chief Justice’s ObamaCare ruling is far from the check on Congress of right-left myth.

“…The commentary on John Roberts’s solo walk into the Affordable Care Act wilderness is converging on a common theme: The Chief Justice is a genius. All of a sudden he is a chessmaster, a statesman, a Burkean minimalist, a battle-loser but war-winner, a Daniel Webster for our times.

Now that we’ve had more time to take in Chief Justice Roberts’s reasoning, we have a better summary: politician. In fact, his 5-4 ruling validating the constitutional arguments against purchase mandates and 5-4 ruling endorsing them as taxes is far more dangerous, and far more political, even than it first appeared last week.

This is a minority view. By right-left acclaim, at least among elites, the Chief Justice has engineered a Marbury v. Madison-like verdict that camouflages new limits on federal power as a reprieve for President Obama’s entitlement legacy and in a stroke enhanced the Supreme Court’s reputation—and his own. This purported “long game” appeals to conservatives who can console themselves with a moral victory, while the liberals who like to assail the Chief Justice as a radical foe of democracy can continue their tantrum.

It’s an elegant theory whose only flaw is that it is repudiated by Chief Justice Roberts’s own language and logic. His gambit substitutes one unconstitutional expansion of government power for another and rearranges the constitutional architecture of the U.S. political system.

His first error is the act of rewriting the plain text of a law, instead of practicing the disinterested interpretation that is the task of the judiciary, regardless of the partisan outcome. The second error is converting the health insurance mandate’s penalty into a tax. Ninety years of precedents have honed precise and widely divergent legal meanings for taxes and penalties for violating laws or regulations, and they are not interchangeable.

The Chief Justice did not simply change a label—as if Congress said something was a penalty when it was really a tax. Rather, these categories are defined by their purposes and effects, by how they operate in practice. Taxes are “exactions” whose main goal is raising revenue, while penalties punish individuals for breaking the law. The boundaries can blur—legitimate taxes may also have strong punitive aims—but scarcely so in this case. ObamaCare’s mandate was designed to regulate individual conduct to help achieve universal coverage. If it succeeds perfectly, it should collect $0.

Even if Democrats had passed the mandate tax as rewritten by the Chief Justice, and they did not, the Supreme Court until Thursday has never held that Congress can call anything it wants a tax. The taxing power like the Commerce Clause is broad, and the courts are generally deferential. But all powers the Constitution enumerates are also limited, and these limits—unique to each power—must be meaningful and enforceable by the legal system.

The Chief Justice’s compounding errors deprive the taxing power of any viable limiting principles. Article I, section 8 gives Congress an independent grant of power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Taxes must originate in the House, the political body designed to be most responsive to voters. There are also important additional safeguards on the type of exactions known as “direct taxes.”

Indirect taxes—”duties, imposts and excises”—are taxes on activities and products. They are passed on by a seller, triggered by a transaction and more or less optional: Consumers don’t have to buy taxed goods and services. Direct taxes, on the other hand, are those that the federal government is empowered to impose on individuals as citizens. They cannot be avoided because they are levied on the existence of people.

America has its origins in a rebellion against arbitrary and pernicious taxation and the Framers wanted to make it extremely difficult to impose or raise direct taxes. These can easily morph into plenary police powers, the regulation of private behavior and conduct that the Constitution vests in the states. For this reason, while the taxing power in addition to raising revenue can achieve regulatory results, those regulatory results must be constitutional themselves. …”

“…Chief Justice Roberts’s ruling is careless about these bedrock tax questions, and they are barely addressed by either the Court’s liberal or conservative wings. His ruling, with its multiple contradictions and inconsistencies, reads as if it were written by someone affronted by the government’s core constitutional claims but who wanted to uphold the law anyway to avoid political blowback and thus found a pretext for doing so in the taxing power.

If this understanding is correct, then Chief Justice Roberts behaved like a politician, which is more corrosive to the rule of law and the Court’s legitimacy than any abuse it would have taken from a ruling that President Obama disliked. The irony is that the Chief Justice’s cheering section is praising his political skills, not his reasoning. Judges are not supposed to invent political compromises.

“It is not our job,” the Chief Justice writes, “to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.” But the Court’s most important role is to protect liberty when the political branches exceed the Constitution’s bounds, not to bless their excesses in the interests of political or personal expediency or both. On one of the most consequential cases he will ever hear, Chief Justice Roberts failed this most basic responsibility.”

A version of this article appeared July 2, 2012, on page A10 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: A Vast New Taxing Power.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303561504577496603068605864.html

The Roberts Rules

The Chief Justice rewrites ObamaCare in order to save it.

“…The Chief Justice ruled that ObamaCare’s mandate violated the Commerce Clause, joined by the Court’s conservative bloc, but he also said that the mandate fell within Congress’s power to tax, joined by the Court’s liberal bloc. In practice this is a restraint on federal power without real restraint—and, worse, the Chief Justice had to rewrite the statute Congress passed in order to salvage it. The ruling will stand as one of the great what-might-have-beens of American constitutional law.

The novel question raised by ObamaCare’s command to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty—the first-ever purchase mandate in U.S. history—was whether Congress could create commerce in order to regulate it. In his 1-4-4 opinion, Chief Justice Roberts writes that construing the Commerce Clause as the Obama Administration argued “would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. . . . The Framers gave Congress the power to regulate commerce, not to compel it, and for over 200 years both our decisions and Congress’s actions have reflected this understanding.”

Note that this rejection of federal compulsion, which the four conservatives supported albeit in dissent, is the same one that the liberal legal establishment spent years deriding as frivolous and beyond debate: Of course Washington has carte blanche to do whatever it wants to do. “That is not the country the Framers of our Constitution envisioned,” the Chief Justice writes, before going on to envision it himself by grounding the mandate in Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.”

According to Chief Justice Roberts, the penalty is merely a tax on not owning health insurance, no different from “buying gasoline or earning income,” and it thus complies with the Constitution. This a large loophole. The result is that Washington has unlimited power to impose new purchase mandates and the courts will find them constitutional if Congress calls them taxes, or even if it calls them something else and judges call them taxes.

That was true with ObamaCare. The Pelosi Democrats explicitly structured the mandate as a regulatory “penalty.” Congress voted down a direct tax in 2009. Supreme Court precedents going back to the 1920s and 1930s define penalties and taxes as mutually exclusive and critically different.

Every lower court that heard the health-care cases rejected the taxing argument. Administration lawyers devoted only 21 lines of their reply brief to this argument and it barely came up at oral arguments. The Chief Justice in effect revised the statute in order to find it constitutional. …”

“…One telling note is that the dissent refers repeatedly to “Justice Ginsburg’s dissent” and “the dissent” on the mandate, but of course they should be referring to Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s concurrence. This wording and other sources suggest that there was originally a 5-4 majority striking down at least part of ObamaCare, but then the Chief Justice changed his mind.

The Justices may never confirm this informed speculation. But if it is true, this is far more damaging to the Court’s institutional integrity that the Chief Justice is known to revere than any ruling against ObamaCare. The political class and legal left conducted an extraordinary campaign to define such a decision as partisan and illegitimate. If the Chief Justice capitulated to this pressure, it shows the Court can be intimidated and swayed from its constitutional duties. If this was a play to compete with John Marshall’s legacy, the result is closer to William Brennan’s.

The Court did rule 7-2 against ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid, the supposedly voluntary federal-state program that once covered only the poor. The majority included liberal Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, who held this expansion to be unconstitutional because the feds commandeered state resources.

The problem is that this also involved rewriting the law. The majority merely created an opt-out that Governors and states could elect to preserve some measure of independent control, instead of telling Congress to start over. Still, this is the first time the Court has found a law enacted under Congress’s spending power to be unconstitutionally coercive.

But this and even the five votes limiting Congress under the Commerce Clause pale against the Chief Justice’s infinitely elastic and dangerous interpretation of the taxing power. Nancy Pelosi famously said we need to pass ObamaCare to find out what’s in it. It turns out we also needed John Roberts to write his appendix.”

A version of this article appeared June 29, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Roberts Rules.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304058404577494400059173634.html

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Syllabus
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT
BUSINESS ET AL. v. SEBELIUS, SECRETARY OF
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 11–393. Argued March 26, 27, 28, 2012—Decided June 28, 2012*
In 2010, Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and decrease the cost of health care. One key provision is the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to maintain“minimum essential” health insurance coverage. 26 U. S. C. §5000A.For individuals who are not exempt, and who do not receive health insurance through an employer or government program, the means of satisfying the requirement is to purchase insurance from a private company. Beginning in 2014, those who do not comply with the mandate must make a “[s]hared responsibility payment” to the Federal Government. §5000A(b)(1). The Act provides that this “penalty”will be paid to the Internal Revenue Service with an individual’s taxes, and “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner” as tax penalties. §§5000A(c), (g)(1).Another key provision of the Act is the Medicaid expansion. The current Medicaid program offers federal funding to States to assist pregnant women, children, needy families, the blind, the elderly, and the disabled in obtaining medical care. 42 U. S. C. §1396d(a). The Affordable Care Act expands the scope of the Medicaid program and increases the number of individuals the States must cover. For ex——————
*Together with No. 11–398, Department of Health and Human Services et al. v. Florida et al., and No. 11–400, Florida et al. v. Department of Health and Human Services et al., also on certiorari to the same court.
2 NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT
BUSINESS v. SEBELIUS
Syllabus
ample, the Act requires state programs to provide Medicaid coverage by 2014 to adults with incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level, whereas many States now cover adults with children only if their income is considerably lower, and do not cover childless adults at all. §1396a(a)(10)(A)(i)(VIII). The Act increases federal funding to cover the States’ costs in expanding Medicaid coverage. §1396d(y)(1).But if a State does not comply with the Act’s new coverage requirements, it may lose not only the federal funding for those requirements, but all of its federal Medicaid funds. §1396c.
Twenty-six States, several individuals, and the National Federation of Independent Business brought suit in Federal District Court,challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit upheld the Medicaid expansion as a valid exercise of Congress’s spending power, but concluded that Congress lacked authority to enact the individual mandate. Finding the mandate severable from the Act’s other provisions, the Eleventh Circuit left the rest of the Act intact.
Held: The judgment is affirmed in part and reversed in part.
648 F. 3d 1235, affirmed in part and reversed in part.
1. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part II, concluding that the Anti-Injunction Act does not bar this suit.
The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person,” 26 U. S. C. §7421(a), so that those subject to a tax must first pay it and then sue for a refund. The present challenge seeks to restrain the collection of the shared responsibility payment from those who do not comply with the individual mandate. But Congress did not intend the payment to be treated asa “tax” for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. The Affordable Care Act describes the payment as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” That label cannot control whether the payment is a tax for purposes of the Constitution, but it does determine the application of the Anti-Injunction Act. The Anti-Injunction Act therefore does not bar this suit. Pp. 11–
15.
2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce
Cite as: 567 U. S. ____ (2012) 3
Syllabus
power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce.
Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals precisely because they are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast domain to congressional authority. Congress

3. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–B that the individual mandate must be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have health insurance, if such a construction is reasonable.
The most straightforward reading of the individual mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. But, for the reasons explained, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power.It is therefore necessary to turn to the Government’s alternative argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. In pressing its taxing power argument, the Government asks the Court to view the mandate as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product. Because “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality,” Hooper v. California, 155
U. S. 648, 657, the question is whether it is “fairly possible” to inter4
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT
BUSINESS v. SEBELIUS
Syllabus
pret the mandate as imposing such a tax, Crowell v. Benson, 285
U. S. 22, 62. Pp. 31–32.
4. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III–C, concluding that the individual mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause. Pp. 33–
44.
(a) The Affordable Care Act describes the “[s]hared responsibility payment” as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” That label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act. It does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s power to tax. In answering that constitutional question, this Court follows a functional approach,“[d]isregarding the designation of the exaction, and viewing its substance and application.” United States v. Constantine, 296 U. S. 287,
294. Pp. 33–35.
(b)
Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax. The payment is not so high that there is really no choice but to buy health insurance; the payment is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are; and the payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. Cf. Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259 U. S. 20, 36–37. None of this is to say that payment is not intended to induce the purchase of health insurance. But the mandate need not be read to declare that failing to do so is unlawful. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor any other law attaches negative legal consequences to not buying health insurance, beyond requiring a payment to the IRS. And Congress’s choice of language—stating that individuals “shall” obtain insurance or pay a “penalty”—does not require reading §5000A as punishing unlawful conduct. It may also be read as imposing a tax on those who go without insurance. See New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 169–174. Pp. 35–40.
(c)
Even if the mandate may reasonably be characterized as a tax, it must still comply with the Direct Tax Clause, which provides:“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Art. I, §9, cl. 4. A tax on going without health insurance is not like a capitation or other direct tax under this Court’s precedents. It therefore need not be apportioned so that each State pays in proportion to its population. Pp. 40–41.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Sections/NEWS/scotus_opinion_on_ACA_from_msnbc.com.pdf

Bachmann Got It Right Two Years Ago!

Bachmann: Obamacare Likely Largest Middle Class Tax Hike Ever