Roberts Flips Sides and Supports Obamacare

Roberts Flips Sides and Supports Obamacare

Stabbed In The Back

   

I feel completely off my chair when I heard the SCOTUS ruling on Obamacare this morning. First off we were assured the bill was not presented as a Tax, Chief Justice Roberts said the following,

“Roberts ruled that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause did not allow the insurance mandate, but that it was constitutional under Congress’s power of taxation.”

(The Hill) Republicans expressed shock and deep disappointment on Thursday after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion to uphold President Obama’s healthcare law.

“I’m disappointed in the result,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Judiciary Committee who participated in Roberts’s lengthy confirmation hearings. “I think history may record that he was not right. I think he may have made a mistake.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a Tea Party favorite and member of the Judiciary Committee elected in 2010, said he was “shocked” Roberts found the law’s mandate that people buy insurance to be a tax.
“I disagree with it,” he said, adding that he was disappointed in Roberts.

Rep. Michele Bachman (R-Minn.), a leader of the Tea Party movement, blasted Roberts’s opinion as out of step with the Constitution.  “We’re profoundly disappointed in the decision from the court,” Bachmann told CNN while standing on the court steps.
“I urge people to read the dissent that was read from the bench by Justice [Anthony] Kennedy and joined in by Justices [Samuel] Alito and also [Antonin] Scalia because that opinion said very clearly, this was an activist court that you saw today,” she said. “What they did was not just uphold ObamaCare; this Supreme Court rewrote ObamaCare in line with its own design.”

Roberts was nominated to the court by President George W. Bush and received unanimous support from GOP senators, who felt blindsided when he voted to uphold a law they believed was on the verge of unraveling.

Roberts ruled that the Constitution’s Commerce Clause did not allow the insurance mandate, but that it was constitutional under Congress’s power of taxation.
Sessions said that while he did not regret voting for Roberts, he could not understand how the chief justice could reach his conclusion, particularly when the law’s authors argued it was not a tax during the congressional debate. 

“This was sold as a mandate, they called it a mandate, it looked like a mandate and in oral argument [the solicitor general] came in and claimed it was a tax but I’m not sure the chief was right in concluding it was a tax,” Sessions said.