Staff Writer, DL Mullan
Government / News
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This article isn't one of those prescriptions of why and how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a terrible piece of legislation. We already know that. People are living that fact everyday.
This article isn't a conservative or liberal propaganda piece. I don't support failed policies and excuses of the main corporate-owned political parties. I just don't have time to have my ethical, moral, or mental aptitudes corrupted. I rather watch paint dry and then eat the lead-laden pieces off the house.
With that said, this article is here to explain how Constitutional and Congressional procedures were not adhered to and therefore makes the Affordable Care Act defunct. You guessed it, when the Affordable Care Act was made into a TAX by the Supreme Court that decided how the legislation was supposed to be brought to fruition.
As a Commerce Clause Law, the Affordable Care Act was begun in the Senate. However, as a tax as it now stands, the Affordable Care Act was supposed to be started in the House of Representatives. Origination is everything.
A lawsuit now underway is bringing this fact under scrutiny. The case was filed by Associate of American Physicians and Surgeons in 2010 (AAPS v. Sebelius), and is pending in the District of Columbia's Circuit Court.
Besides questioning the constitutionality of the ACA, this case raises other issues including that the law violates the Fifth Amendment by compelling private citizens to buy from a government approved private company as well as for government to take property from one citizen in order to transfer that property to another in direct violation of the Takings Clause.
If these issues cause nonconformity in rulings amongst the courts, then the probability of a Supreme Court intervention is possible.
However while we are questioning being forced to buy goods and services by the government... Shouldn't we question why our regular light bulbs are illegal but mercury spewing ones aren't? Shouldn't we question why Americans are forced to buy car insurance? Or for that any state or corporate mandated insurance? Why the Food and Drug Administration has argued in court that Americans do not have the right to food choices?
Until the American people have had enough and start speaking out, we have to rely on others to speak for us:
Until the American people have had enough and start speaking out, we have to rely on others to speak for us:
The Supreme Court has ruled, however, that the Senate can initiate bills that create revenue, if the revenue is incidental and not directly a tax. Most recently, in US v Munoz-Flores (495 US 385 [1990]), the Court said, "Because the bill at issue here was not one for raising revenue, it could not have been passed in violation of the Origination Clause." The case cites Twin City v Nebeker (176 US 196 [1897]), where the court said that "revenue bills are those that levy taxes, in the strict sense of the word."If the Affordable Care Act is a tax that the Supreme Court has defined specifically for the House of Representatives to originate, then the ACA may be unconstitutional and therefore finished as an executable law.
