Here, Michael F. Cannon, an expert on the economics of health care and the provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), remarks briefly on the June 25th, 2015 decision of the Supreme Court to allow the IRS and the Obama administration to ignore the law.
Here, you may read a few succinct words from the dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia, who along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., voted to uphold the law, as written by Congress. Six justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy, and Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to ignore the words Congress specifically wrote into the Obamacare Act.
Given the completely clear language of the Act, and given the well-known, express intention of Congress to deny Obamacare subsidies for citizens of states that chose not to establish their own exchanges (a provision of the PPACA that Congress fully intended to entice states to establish their own exchanges), today's Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell makes a complete and absolute mockery of the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States.
How can Americans be anything but ashamed of our President and the six members of the Supreme Court responsible for today's ruling?
It's now completely clear that Americans live by the rule of a few privileged and powerful men instead of the rule of law, men who are able to ignore completely---evidently with impunity---the Congress of the United States and the laws it passes. Forget about the Constitution; it means nothing. Forget about laws passed by Congress and signed by the President; they mean nothing. Forget about liberty; forget about the principles of law and justice that once made America great.
What now can this President and future presidents not do? What principles now limit the power of American presidents? What law cannot be broken, if the President chooses to break it? Evidently, the President of the United States can do whatever he wishes to do. Today is a very dark day in American history.
Here, you may read a few succinct words from the dissent of Justice Antonin Scalia, who along with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., voted to uphold the law, as written by Congress. Six justices, Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kennedy, and Chief Justice John Roberts, voted to ignore the words Congress specifically wrote into the Obamacare Act.
Given the completely clear language of the Act, and given the well-known, express intention of Congress to deny Obamacare subsidies for citizens of states that chose not to establish their own exchanges (a provision of the PPACA that Congress fully intended to entice states to establish their own exchanges), today's Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell makes a complete and absolute mockery of the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States.
How can Americans be anything but ashamed of our President and the six members of the Supreme Court responsible for today's ruling?
It's now completely clear that Americans live by the rule of a few privileged and powerful men instead of the rule of law, men who are able to ignore completely---evidently with impunity---the Congress of the United States and the laws it passes. Forget about the Constitution; it means nothing. Forget about laws passed by Congress and signed by the President; they mean nothing. Forget about liberty; forget about the principles of law and justice that once made America great.
What now can this President and future presidents not do? What principles now limit the power of American presidents? What law cannot be broken, if the President chooses to break it? Evidently, the President of the United States can do whatever he wishes to do. Today is a very dark day in American history.
