by Doug Book, editor
The IRS is facing numerous lawsuits thanks to its illegal decision to provide subsidies to insurance companies in states which did NOT create an ObamaCare exchange. The Service’s unilateral decision to confiscate and distribute $700 billion in subsidies and tax credits DIRECTLY violates the language of the Affordable Care Act; language which is quite specific in stating that subsidies and the penalties they trigger are only authorized to be dealt out through STATE established exchanges.
In August of 2013, District Judge Ronald White ruled that a suit filed against the IRS for this illegal ObamaCare decision may go forward. The federal govt had asked that the suit by Oklahoma’s Attorney General Scott Pruitt be thrown out, claiming the State lacked standing, a typical ploy of the Obama Department of Justice.
And now, 3 states have used the illegal and unconstitutional IRS scheme as a means of halting implementation of the Affordable Care Act within their borders. Following advice provided by the Tenth Amendment Center, legislators in Missouri, South Carolina and Georgia have offered legislation which would prevent their states from “…taking any action that would ‘compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer, or health care provider to participate in any health care system.’” The federal government would therefore be completely on its own in establishing, directing or running an ObamaCare exchange within the state. (1) Such legislation is based upon 150 years of Supreme Court opinions involving the “anti-commandeering doctrine,” the legal principle that “…states are not required to help the federal government enforce federal acts or regulatory programs.”
But even more devastating to ObamaCare than forcing federal bureaucrats to “do it all themselves” is the ability of the 34 states which did NOT establish an exchange to protect their citizens from ObamaCare mandates. As the Tenth Amendment Center explains:
“States that did not set up a state run exchange can actually block the IRS’s illegal ObamaCare taxes legislatively by suspending the licenses of insurers that accept the illegal subsidies. Since no insurer would then accept one, not a single employer in the state could be hit with the employer-mandate penalties those subsidies trigger.”
As the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act gives states the authority to regulate insurance and insurance companies within their borders, neither the federal government nor the IRS can interfere with this statutory language. The South Carolina House has already passed its version of an ObamaCare nullification bill and the Republican controlled senate is scheduled to act on the legislation this week. The Missouri and Georgia legislatures are working to add this language to their own legislation.
Gutless DC Republicans have made it clear that ObamaCare is unlikely to be derailed at the federal level. And a corrupt Chief Justice will undoubtedly permit any pending or future ObamaCare-instigated destruction of the Constitution to frolic through the Supreme Court unabated.
It will be up to Republican controlled states to halt the most egregious assault on individual liberty in the nation’s history. The 2014, legislative future of state-initiated, anti-ObamaCare statutes will determine whether Americans still live in a free country.
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