Quote:
Originally Posted by doglover
you can support the bill all you want, just don't call it constitutional.
that's the thing that annoys me
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You know, repeating something three times doesn't make it true.
You have yet to cogently explain what makes this new legislation unconstitutional. It's possible a legitimate argument exists; but I sure haven't heard it in this thread.
Let me explain this to you another way: the sanction here is a tax penalty. There is effectively no real difference between levying a tax penalty on some taxpayers and giving a tax credit to others--they're mirror images of one another. One of them reduces the tax due, the other increases it. In effect, you pay a penalty in the U.S. if you do not own a house, and if you do not drive a hybrid car. The government calls it a tax credit, but the reality is this: you would owe less tax if you had done these things--if you did not, you pay more tax.
A penalty works more or less the same way, but in the other direction. If you do A, you pay less tax. If you do B, you pay more. It's as though everyone received a tax credit except you, because you didn't follow the rules. That sort of thing happens all the time, and it isn't unconstitutional at all.
The only way this could be unconstitutional is if it were unconstitutional for Congress to tax different taxpayers differently in the first place--and clearly, it's not. It may help you to think of this as an across-the-board tax increase that you only have to pay if you don't buy health insurance.
In that context, you are free to not like the bill, and to feel that it impinges on your freedoms. Just don't pretend that those freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed--they aren't.