Why the ObamaCare Tax Penalty Is Unconstitutional

By: |Published on: Jul 22, 2010|Categories: Constitution, Health Care|

Kenneth Blackwell and Kenneth Klukowski in the WSJ. Here’s an excerpt:

The Justice Department announced last week that it would defend the new federal health-insurance mandate as an exercise of Congress’s “power to lay and collect taxes,” even though Barack Obama had insisted before the bill’s passage that it was “absolutely not a tax increase.” The truth is the mandate is not a tax—and if it were it would be unconstitutional.

A tax is when the government takes money from individuals, puts it in the Treasury, and plans to spend it. With the health-insurance mandate, the government is not taking money from private individuals; rather, it is commanding them to give …

It’s registration-enabled, but a good read:
click here for the full article

Or, read Rob Natelson’s take on it – here, here and here.

Tags: Constitutionality, Obamacare, Rob Natelson

Michael Boldin
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