MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, a key Obamacare architect, generated significant debate last week when a 2012 video surfaced in which he appeared to agree with the law’s current legal challengers: Subsidies are not available on the federal insurance marketplace. Now those comments have made an appearance in a U.S. Supreme Court brief asking the high court to take up the issue.
The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell asked the Supreme Court Thursday to take their case. They lost their lawsuit, one of several challenging the subsides, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last week. Rather than appeal to the full appeals court, they took it straight to the Supreme Court.
In their new brief, the plaintiffs point to Gruber’s comments to bolster their position: “The robust incentives provided by the ACA — in particular, the conditioning of tax credits on state-run exchanges — were thought sufficient to do so. As one of the Act’s architects, Prof. Jonathan Gruber, later explained …”
They then quoted Gruber in the newly publicized video, in which he appears to say that states had to set up their own insurance exchange for their residents to receive tax credits under the law.
“If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits,” Gruber says in the video. “I hope that’s a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these Exchanges, and that they’ll do it.”
Gruber, who was heavily consulted by Congress and the White House during Obamacare’s drafting, has since said that the comments were “just a mistake.”
These people are seriously desperate. It’s like arguing about the location of the jezail bullet in Dr. Watson. Conan Doyle gives three locations in three separate Sherlock Holmes stories: his shoulder, his leg or “one of his limbs”. Obsessive fans argue about which of these is the “correct” location. Suffice it to say, the Dr. was a wounded veteran.
Idiots.
Gruber is not part of Congress.
So they are asking the United States Supreme Court to take judicial notice of an interview that wasn’t part of the record? First of all I don’t know if the SCOTUS can take judicial notice of evidence since it is a reviewing and not a trial court. Second it is hearsay and not really admissible under any hearsay exception. Third it is patently unfair to take notice of Gruber’s comments without giving him the opportunity he would have in a courtroom of explaining the remarks. Of course since it is being done in the name of stopping affordable health care for millions of Americans, Roberts and company will probably be fine with it.
That nails the case shut. Obamacare is dead.
Thanks to that precedent, I can now state with certainty that: the purpose of the Iraq war was to tell the Islamic Middle East to “Suck. On. This.”; that the Iraq war mostly paid for itself; and that we know where the WMDs we never found were.
Out of context bullshit is the only thing these dirtbags have to offer.
Maybe they should also quote the dissent by Scalia in the prior Obamacare case where he laid out in precise fashion the reason for and function of the subsidies, describing how they extend to all applicants who qualify based on income and how they are essential to the operation of the law. Totally fucking in context.
What I’m saying here, and I’m not alone, is that the usual suspects who these fuckholes are relying on to invalidate the subsidies have already proffered the exact opposite argument in a fucking supreme court ruling.
Now don’t get me wrong. I expect zero consistency from Scalia and his vermin pals. But their legitimacy would be so cratered that enforcement of their treachery would amount to a crime against the American people.
Which brings me to another point. If Obama doesn’t want to enforce a judicial ruling, who the fuck is gonna make him do it? Shit, he could just issue an executive order stating that any exchange on Healthcare.gov is for purposes of the ACA a state exchange. Who’s gonna stop him?
Nobody, that’s who. SCrOTUS has ZERO enforcement ability. They rely entirely upon the good faith of the executive and to a far, far lesser extent Congress. Congress really can’t do shit either, except impeach, and they’ve cried wolf on that bullshit. What…you’re gonna impeach a president for preserving tax credits per the clear intent of the law? Good luck, fuckholes.
The president of the united states, as Lincoln reminded us, is clothed in immense power. Just watch what happens on immigration.