Supreme Suspense: Getting Ready for the Big ObamaCare Decision

[Valin]

E21:

James C. Capretta

06/13/2012

 

Very soon, the Supreme Court will be rendering judgment on the constitutionality of ObamaCare. It is one of the most highly anticipated decisions in decades, and for good reason. Whatever the outcome, it’s going to be a political earthquake. The only question is the degree to which it will shake up the political and policy landscape.

 

Of course, at this point, only a handful of people have any idea how the court will rule, and they aren’t talking (or at least one presumes — and hopes — they aren’t). So there’s no real way to predict what the Court will decide.

 

Still, it’s possible to boil down the various scenarios to a handful that capture the most likely outcomes, and to examine the implications of those scenarios through both a policy and a political lens. Indeed, for those who have spent the past three years opposing ObamaCare, it’s critically important to be prepared for all eventualities because what the key players in this drama say and do in the days after the Court issues its decision could be just as important as the decision itself to the future of ObamaCare and American health care.

 

(Snip)

 

H/T The Weekly Standard

[clearvision]

Washington Post:

In this city of rumors and leaks, it has been an excruciating lead-up to the Supreme Court ruling on President Obama’s health-care law. The decision is just days away, but virtually no one knows precisely when it will come or what it will say.

 

Each day brings a new wave of speculation via Twitter and Washington gossip channels. And behind the scenes, Republicans and Democrats are strategizing about what to do in the moments and days after the most consequential high court decision in a generation — a ruling that will reverberate politically and in the lives of everyday Americans.

 

At the White House and on Capitol Hill, officials and their aides are spinning in advance and preparing their “day of” statements.

 

“I don’t know when it’s going to happen, so what I have in my head is, when we hear from the court that they’re going to announce a decision, I grab one or two of our staff people and a camera, and stand in front of the Supreme Court and comment,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of Congress’s most vocal critics of the law.

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Coming Soon....

[Geee]

Judgment Day Draws Nigh for Obamacare

The Supreme Court will hand down its Obamacare ruling during the week of June 25, and Nostradamus himself would hesitate to make a prediction about the particulars of what will inevitably be a controversial decision. Nonetheless, it's difficult to imagine that the Court will leave what Justice Scalia called "the heart" of the law standing. That the individual mandate is in genuine peril was made abundantly clear during last March's oral arguments, when Justice Kennedy asked the Solicitor General, "Do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the Constitution?" Coming from Kennedy, widely considered the Court's sole remaining swing vote, that query completely unmanned the law's advocates.

Faced with such skepticism from Kennedy, the most obtuse of Obamacare's cheerleaders were forced to accept reality. Even Ezra Klein got it: "The quick read is that today went very badly for supporters of the individual mandate." What many of the law's boosters still don't get, however, is that they had a "bad day" not merely because the hapless Donald Verilli spectacularly failed to "carry the heavy burden of justification" for the mandate, but because that failure also portended the demise of two additional Obamacare provisions without which the law will be effectively eviscerated. If the justices strike down the individual mandate, they will very likely strike down the law's guaranteed issue and community rating provisions as well.

Why would they do that? Well, the DOJ recommended that very course of action. The third day of March's hearings was largely devoted to the dilemma created when the Democrats failed to include a severability clause in the law. The absence of such language, in theory, means the entire statute must fall if the mandate is struck down. This is, of course, the position the plaintiffs have taken all along. The DOJ disagrees, but does concede that the mandate is not severable from these other two provisions. As Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler told the justices, "If you take out minimum coverage, but leave in the guaranteed issue and community rating, you will make matters worse… we think those things rise or fall in a package."

Presumably, the DOJ took this position in the hope that the justices would leave the mandate unmolested because striking it down would doom two more crucial provisions of the law. We don't yet know if that strategy had the desired effect on the justices, but it's blindingly obvious that its implications were lost on many of Obamacare's cheerleaders. This is particularly true of those who make their living in the "news" media. A recent Politico piece, for example, contains the following passage: "Many SCOTUS watchers think one of the most likely scenarios is that the court will toss out the individual mandate and keep the rest of the law. That would leave a lot of the popular pieces alone, like covering pre-existing conditions…"

 

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/06/15/judgment-day-draws-nigh-for-ob

[Draggingtree]

Pelosi: ObamaCare Will Be Upheld 6-3, "Because I Know The Constitution"

 

When asked why she is so confident the Supreme Court will uphold the health care law, Pelosi says, "Because I know the Constitution."http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/31/pelosi_obamacare_will_be_upheld_6-3_because_i_know_the_constitution.html dam that woman is something else

[RidesAPaleHorse]

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Edited June 15, 2012 by clearvision
put photo link in image bbcode

[Evad]

Pelosi: ObamaCare Will Be Upheld 6-3, "Because I Know The Constitution"

 

When asked why she is so confident the Supreme Court will uphold the health care law, Pelosi says, "Because I know the Constitution."http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/05/31/pelosi_obamacare_will_be_upheld_6-3_because_i_know_the_constitution.html dam that woman is something else

When asked why she is so confident the Supreme Court will uphold the health care law, Pelosi says, "Because I know the Constitution."

She was misquoted.

What she actually said was "Because I know what it takes to destroy the Constitution".