A. Defendants Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Jacob J. Lew, Secretary of the United States Department of the Treasury, and the respective Executive Branch departments they head, have violated, and are continuing to violate, the Constitution by directing, paying, and continuing to pay, public funds to certain insurance companies to implement a program authorized by the ACA, but for which no funds have been appropriated. Such unconstitutional payments are estimated to exceed $3 billion in Fiscal Year 2014, and total approximately $175 billion over the ten succeeding Fiscal Years. Defendantsâ expenditure of taxpayer funds, absent a congressional appropriation, plainly is unconstitutional as it violates Article I of the Constitution; it also violates statutory law, in particular, 31 U.S.C. § 1324, the ACA, and the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 500
So if over fifty votes to repeal the ACA didnât work, now we see another law suit! My, what a long tantrum the Repubs are throwing because they oppose health care for the citizens of the United States. What planet are they from anyway?
Speaking of insurance, the House says Obama has âgiven awayâ $175 billion to insurance companies under the law, and the insurance companies are flush with profits. They will not sit quietly by and let the Rs destroy this legislation or any part of itâŠ
The usual go-to website for background on someone, Wiki, says this about Turley, and while Nancyâs spokesman knows how to zing, Turleyâs not exactly an ambulance chaser⊠His talent cannot be dismissed out of hand.
I think theyâre referring to the Section 1402 Offset Program Payments that allows insurers to offer reduced deductibles and copays. If the court decides the House has standing to sue the law may be in trouble.
The solution for the Insurance companies may be one of those dead of night amendments but that would mess up their lawsuit.
Whatâs interesting to note is WHY the House GOP/Teatrolls refused to appropriate and fund under Section 1402, which this Turley idiot essentially admits on their behalf with this Complaint:
They were attempting to set up a situation that would discourage all the insurers in the country from participating in the ACA exchanges so they could collapse the whole thing and claim the insurance industry rejected it and/or financially punish participation such that insurers on the exchanges would jack up their premiums and thereby fulfill the GOP/Teatrollsâ prophecies.
How so? Insurers participating in the ACA and offering plans on the exchanges have to provide âCost-Sharing Reductionsâ (reduced deductibles, co-pays, etc.). In exchange, the federal govât is then authorized under 1402 to make payments to the insurers to help off-set these Cost-Sharing Reductions. Therefore, by refusing to fund 1402, the GOP/Teatrolls hoped to make it too costly for insurers to participate on the exchanges by denying them any subsidization of the Cost-Sharing Reductions they would be required to provide if they did participate. Essentially, they tried to turn the Cost-Sharing Reductions into a massive penalty on insurers for participating and helping it work. They would then turn around and say that the insurance industry rejected the ACAâs exchanges because âfree market something something the math doesnât work blah blah blah.â Moreover, what they REALLY hoped would happen is that insurers who chose to participate in the exchanges and suffer this unwarranted and unjust penalty would turn around and jack up their premiums sky high in order to recoup the costs of the Cost-Sharing Reductions they were obligated to provide. The GOP/Teatrolls would then have turned around and said âsee, we told you Obamacare would cause all of your premiums to skyrocket because youâre being made to pay for health care poor people and niggers.â The MSM would then dutifully ignore that the ACA hadnât caused any of these problems. Rather, the GOP/Teatrolls deliberately breaking the ACA by refusing to provide the funding for 1402 had caused those problems. But thatâs all too complicated for your average American fucktard to understand.
Brass tacks: this Complaint serves as a massive right-there-in-black-and-white admission that the GOP/Teatrolls actively seek to break government to âproveâ it is broken.
Obama didnât ignore the will of the people, he circumvented the Republican party that chose to obstruct him at every turn, in every way. They were not going to work with him on anything. Sad and petulant.
Iâd have to assume itâs partly that and partly that their case for standing is pretty bad. Plus, their whole scheme (if one understands it), as set forth in great detail in this lawsuit, is so utterly disgusting, cynical and barebones unethical and amoral that I can imagine partners meetings in which some partners told the other conservative partners, who were no doubt popping wood over this gamesmanship, that they wanted no part in such fucked up behavior.
Skimmed it. Not sure on standing as Iâm not quite as familiar with the precedent on that as I am with how the ACA was supposed to function here and, by extension, precisely how the GOP/Teatrolls were trying to deliberately break it.
My take is somewhat more geared towards the slippery slope this creates. In my mind, it would take some crazy mental contortions by the conservatives on the SCOTUS to reach a conclusion that the House shows it is being damaged and thereby establishes standing any time the following occurs:
House and Senate enact legislation creating a program and POTUS signs it into law;
House changes hands and then simply refuses to fund some or all of that program because it canât actually get it repealed, canât overcome a veto, etc.;
POTUS obeys the law because it is still on the books and does what he must to implement it in accordance with its intent;
House claims it is damaged because they deliberately used funding decisions to attempt to force the POTUS to implement the law in a manner that would break it but he instead continued to do whatever needed to be done to make it work correctly in accordance with the lawâs intent.
We like to talk about the power of the purse, but what the GOP/Teatrolls are really trying to do here is stretch legislative power to new heights where they forever establish that congress never needs to repeal anything to get it off the books and make it no longer a law that must be obeyed, they never need to overcome a POTUS veto ever again and they never need to enact anything absolving the POTUS and executive branch from failure to obey existing, valid, Constitutional laws they have refused to fund. Itâs fucking absurd and not at all what was intended by the separation of powers. It reduces the POTUS to nothing but congressâs puppet, which is what they want now that they foresee a future in which national elections and the WH might be out of their reach for a long long time due to demographic shifts.
Paragraph 4 really highlights the crux of it: The House wants to claim it is damaged because their attempt to break legislation that the House enacted was thwarted by Obama continuing to implement the law as the House intended. Think carefully about that for a few moments and really savor the Orwellian doublethink involved. To arrive at the decision that the House has been damaged by this, you almost have to ascribe to the idea that this is somehow a different House than the one that enacted the still-existing and unaltered legislation, but itâs not. The House as an institution does not somehow change identity just because an election took place and the party in control switched. It remains the HouseâŠthe same House that enacted and has not repealed the law and the requirements it placed on the executive branch.
Edit: Whatâs next? Simply refusing to fund Medicare? Medicaid? SS? Food Stamps? How many other laws and programs can you come up with that REQUIRE the executive branch to do things, that the GOP/Teatrolls canât in a million years get repealed but could maybe get away with failing to fund the REQUIRED actions of the executive branch? If SCOTUS politicizes this standing decision, I envision a future in which Congress wastes a whole lot of time, maybe all its time, doing nothing but sung the POTUS when heâs from a different party than the majorityâŠand that goes for both parties. Congress will turn into a litigation festival.
And note, BTW, that attacking the funding of the 1402 program is really the heart of the lawsuit and is what would really cause the ACA to collapse if somehow it were to succeed, but all thatâs ever mentioned (including here at TPM) is the employer mandate, which is a minor part and makes the suit sound even more ridiculous than it is. The main remedy theyâre seeking is stopping any further 1402 payments.
Indeed. what the House is essentially saying is the following:
The House enacted legislation with a certain intent that it be implemented to be effective.
The House refused to fund a portion of it as an intentional attempt to break it and make implementation of it into a national disaster.
The House is being damaged because President Darky continued to implement the law to make it effective and in accordance with the lawâs intent instead of implementing it in a manner that would break it and turn it into a national disaster.
âWe tried to make POTUS create a national disaster and he didnâtâŠwe demand injunctive relief giving us our national disasterâ is their argument for why they are damaged and therefore have standing. At the very least, it violates all sorts of principles of equity and you might even call it unclean hands. And again, I think you really have to try hard to arrive at the conclusion that âthe Houseâ is somehow not the same entity and institution in 1 and 2âŠthat it somehow becomes a different entity and institution every 2 years such that the House in 2 and 3 is not responsible at all for the House in 1.
Edit: Iâm probably sounding like Iâm repeating myself hahaâŠjust trying to work out the kinks in how to explain my thoughts on it I guess.
