i say could because they don t necessarily have to, but i want to let viewers see the possibilities right now. regarding the issues that are before the supremes. number one is this anti-injunction act which goes back to the 1870s. can a taxation provision prevent a court challenge until the law was fully in effect which means can you rule on a tax before the tax is applied if you define this penalty defined as a tax or not? that s number one. number two deals with the commerce clause, can congress enact the minimum coverage provision. that deals directly with the mandate. and then you go to number three, can the laws stand if you take the mandate out? that s the severability clause. and then number four, does the burden of increased medicaid funding violate the tenth amendment which relates directly to how washington interacts with the states and how the states and whether or not they re told to beef up the medicaid rules or not.
september 20th 2009, george stephanopoulos, this is a tax increase about this law president obama no. that s not true, george. for us to say you have to take responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase. nobody considers this a tax increase, and on and on he went and repeatedly said this was not a tax increase. when they went into court they said something very different and the supreme court accepted that legal argument. bill: and the way this tax is expected to be implemented i think it s fair to call it a tax now regardless of what the debate was three months ago. megyn: it s being taken out of your tax refund. bill: correct. that is now the government will collect it. it s the most bizarre tax in the history of the country. it is not related to your income, it is related to your behavior. it applies to what they commanded you to do. and that command they are not allowed to articulate under the commerce clause.
power under the commerce clause and necessary and proper clause. shannon has more. reporter: as we told you at the top, no under the commerce clause, no under necessary and proper, but yes it appears under the taxing power. this is the key line, the affordable care act s requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health insurance may be reasonably characterized as a tax, because the constitution permits such a tax it is not our role to forbid it or pass upon its wisdom or fairness. that language from the chief justice sounds like no under commerce, no under necessary anr under the tax provision and the power of congress to tax that that particular reading, this survives apparently because of that language, because the constitution permits this kind of tax, not a role to forbid it or pass upon its wisdom or fairness, that is on page 44. bill: how many pages are there? is it several hundred, by the
whether the mandate is constitutional or unconstitutional? have they decided whether this thing that the irs is going to assess as a penalty or a tax, and have they decided whether the congress can order the states to expand medicaid? we ll probably know pretty quickly what the answers are to those questions, but the reasons why may take us a little bit of time to digest for you. let me give you a scene setter as we re watching the exterior of the court. the justices are taking their seat at the bench, the chief justice will be in the middle, and then they ll fan out in order of seniority. all of the reporters are in a satellite room. the decisions get boomed out overhead, they hear the justices reading from there, but they get the opinions immediately in that press room. so, but not before the court reads it. so we have to wait. so it ll all happen simultaneously. the justices whoever s written the majority opinion in health care will read an excerpt, and normally whoever s writte
government had the right to compel everyone to purchase insurance as a condition of being alive. instead upholds it on the basis that this is a tax. if this is actually the decision it s a boost for the president. it is but it doesn t make the controversy go away, in fact it probably enhances the controversy, because like so many other things connected with this act the premises upon which it was sold, this is not a tax, you can keep your plan if you want it, it will reduce the deficit, all these things turned out not to be true, and they are upholding it on the grounds that it was not sold on. bill: dissenting justices include scalia, kennedy thomas and alito. it appears at the moment that kennedy was not the wild card justice on this. it was chief justice john roberts. who leads on the appeal does the house go first or do they work in concert with mitt romney and