And Kennedy. FTR, Roberts also joined on Scalia's opinion the piece quoted.
D.C. Circuit guts ObamaCare
- Thread starter DinoDoc
- Start date
No one is saying the executive gets to change the law. That is no one's argument. The 4th circuit said the executive is doing what congress wanted them to do and enforcing the law as written.
Unless you consider the legislation known as the Administrative Procedures Act.
Which branch of government are you referring to here? Do you mean the current Executive administration? Legislative? Judicial? I assume you mean Obama's executive administration, but just like the judicial branch of government, they do not pass the laws and just like the judicial, they should not get to blow off the law just because they don't like how it was written.
The 4th Circuit itself basically admitted that a reading the law as written supports my position more closely than it does that of the government.
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Farm Boy
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No, but the executive branch has thousands of statutory obligations and prerogatives that apply to it in any given situation. It's a rat's nest of tangles and a clever man can make those obligations require, allow, or forbid the same exact actions depending on who is paying him to make the argument.
[T]he president lacks the power to revise clear statutory terms that turn out not to work in practice.
The government, i.e. the lawyers who defend the government's position in just about every single case brought against the government since the beginning of the United States. Yes that is the executive branch. No that has nothing to do with the actual legal arguments presented.
On a somewhat related note: Investigators obtain ObamaCare coverage, subsidies using fake identities
In isolation. The Court declines to look at it in isolation, under long standing principles of statutory construction.
From the following page:
Since the ACA also says that the DHHS can create "such exchanges" (i.e., "such" as in State exchanges, in other words stepping into the shoes of state exchanges) it makes sense to afford "such" exchanges the same benefits. Reading it the other way guts the law and renders the DHHS ability to create "such" exchanges superfluous and irrelevant.
To make this clearer, here is how the law is written:
1. state run exchanges get all our fancy ACA tax subsidies and they get the mandate.
2. and by the way the DHHS can create "such exchanges."
The rub lies in, does #2 mean DHHS exchanges can act like state exchanges and get all the benefits, or do we basically just eliminate part 2 of the law since part 1 renders it moot, if you do not read the two together?
No actually that isn't related at all.
Farm Boy
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I guess you can look at it this way bh. Things are working pretty much as intended. While our government has a lot of idealism in it, it's also designed with a deep cynicism. The powers of the government, when interacting with each other, are not equal in all ways. The executive branch is the most single minded, if you rule out civil war and naked violence(a big ruling out) it's also got the most strings attached to it, the most obligations to the other branches to pay heed to. Its singlemindedness helps balance this out. The legislative branch is sort of the opposite and its power varies wildly. A unified legislature is a power to behold. Don't like a ruling on a statute? Change it. Don't like an executive action? Prohibit it. Don't like how the courts or executive behave despite your legislation? Defund them, amend, or impeach. Now a fractious legislature incapable of passing simple required legislation like budgets? It can't get anything done. The other two branches are going to assume its powers and fill in the void until it unifies enough to have a coherent voice.
Congress took the time to define exchanges created by DC and our colonies as being equivalent to State exchanges. If the intention was to do the same with Federally run exchanges, they had ample opportunity to do so. They didn't.
...since those exchanges wouldn't be, you know... "state exchanges" maybe?
They define State exchanges in the law. Federally run exchanges don't appear within that definition.
Berzerker
Deity
Least it wasn't obnoxious, boring would be an improvement for you
Dino asked you to explain that and instead of responding you ran off to insult me?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Why can't the spirit of the law be more important than the exact letter of the law, anyway?
It seems like what happens is that each law ends up being 351,806,486 pages.. So that nobody really knows what the hell is contained within and what implications it may have..
But only if you care about the letter of the law. If you only care about the spirit of the law, and use the letter of the law as a backup (in case the language or intent is unclear), wouldn't all these problems go away?
Isn't that how some legal systems do it? Isn't it more efficient? This way it seems you're always going to find loopholes and inconsistencies in each law you end up "writing", since it's so full of legal mumbo jumbo.
It seems like what happens is that each law ends up being 351,806,486 pages.. So that nobody really knows what the hell is contained within and what implications it may have..
But only if you care about the letter of the law. If you only care about the spirit of the law, and use the letter of the law as a backup (in case the language or intent is unclear), wouldn't all these problems go away?
Isn't that how some legal systems do it? Isn't it more efficient? This way it seems you're always going to find loopholes and inconsistencies in each law you end up "writing", since it's so full of legal mumbo jumbo.
Farm Boy
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The PRC seems to do the spirit of the law thing heavily.
The argument is that yes, in fact they do, if you read the entire law. The law says "Exchanges" means an exchange created by a State...and then later it says the Feds can create "such Exchanges."
There is nothing in the law saying "exchanges" means only exchanges created by States plus the territories to the exclusion of exchanges created by the HHS.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
And I dare say some of their federal initiatives actually work out in terms of what they were intended to accomplish, on the surface at least, a lot better than in the U.S., where the states have a lot more power. Maybe this is a federal power vs states power issue, I have no idea.
But that's beside the point. My point is that when you draft a law or bill it has got to have a reason to exist. If the reason is: "Let's make sure poor people can have affordable housing.. and as such companies putting up affordable housing should get tax breaks".. then obviously if a company figures out a way to skirt the law to get the tax breaks while putting up a condo tower for rich people, a judge should be able to decree: "You stupid idiots, that's not what that law was for. Here's a fine equivalent to the tax breaks and then some."
Doesn't the legal system work like that somewhere? It seems far more sensible to me, but then again IANAL. And no, I don't mean China.
Farm Boy
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Well, it wasn't intended as a damnation of the Chinese. Just a realization that both ways of looking at things have their own problems. And that's even operating on the assumption that people are taking the system seriously rather than attempting to get theirs screw everyone else.
