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June 03, 2011
Obama Solicitor General: "If you don't like mandate, earn less money"
Obama Solicitor General: "If you don't like mandate, earn less money"
President Obama’s solicitor general, defending the national health care law on Wednesday, told a federal appeals court that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.
Neal Kumar Katyal, the acting solicitor general, made the argument under questioning before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, which was considering an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center. (Listen to oral arguments here.) The three-judge panel, which was comprised of two Republican-appointed judges and a Democratic-appointed judge, expressed more skepticism about the government’s defense of the health care law than the Fourth Circuit panel that heard the Virginia-based Obamacare challenge last month in Richmond. The Fourth Circuit panel was made up entirely of Democrats, and two of the judges were appointed by Obama himself.
During the Sixth Circuit arguments, Judge Jeffrey Sutton, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, asked Kaytal if he could name one Supreme Court case which considered the same question as the one posed by the mandate, in which Congress used the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution as a tool to compel action.
Kaytal conceded that the Supreme Court had “never been confronted directly” with the question, but cited the Heart of Atlanta Motel case as a relevant example. In that landmark 1964 civil rights case, the Court ruled that Congress could use its Commerce Clause power to bar discrimination by private businesses such as hotels and restaurants.
“They’re in the business,” Sutton pushed back. “They’re told if you’re going to be in the business, this is what you have to do. In response to that law, they could have said, ‘We now exit the business.’ Individuals don’t have that option.”
Kaytal responded by noting that the there’s a provision in the health care law that allows people to avoid the mandate.
“If we’re going to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, the minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income,” Kaytal said. “So it’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It’s not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Motel, someone doesn’t need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at…”
Sutton interjected, “That wasn’t in a single speech given in Congress about this…the idea that the solution if you don’t like it is make a little less money.”
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Wild Thing's comment.......
“Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.”
The goal...exposed...
Americans must be punished for clinging to their God, guns, religion...and freedom. Destruction on an epic scale. National bankruptcy is the PLAN!
And there are still people in this country that still don’t believe obama’s main goal is to destroy this country.
Posted by Wild Thing at June 3, 2011 04:50 AM
Comments
.... T-Minus 522 days until Election Day 2012 and
John Edwards may even have a CELL NUMBER by then!
Posted by: darthcrUSAderworldtour07 at June 3, 2011 12:23 PM
But If you are a Union member, don't worry, Your Non union neighbor will pay for it. How's all of that hope and change working for you now.
Heard the latest, black boxes on new automobiles to track how much you drive and that too will be taxed. So we pay taxes, for the already overpriced damn car, taxes for the gasoline, and taxes again for driving the piece of crap that already has a built in obsolesance to rot out in a year and a half, then charge more taxes for pollution from the FeO2(Iron Oxide) and its residuals being released to the atmosphere in the form of rust.
Posted by: Mark at June 3, 2011 12:51 PM
Mark
I am an engineer, J.C.Whitney has an active rust protections system that works. It is an active cathod system that slowed the rusting rate to 2% if installed correctly when tested at the test facility in South Carolina. (I'm DOD not JC Whitney) By the way the engineer was laid off and is building submarines now.
I don't know how to organize a rescue of the United States and we badly need it.
Posted by: Avitar at June 3, 2011 02:59 PM
Darth, I sure do like this.
"T-Minus 522 days until Election Day 2012"
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 4, 2011 03:12 AM
Thanks Mark and Avitar.
Posted by: Wild Thing at June 4, 2011 03:14 AM
