The Patriot Post® · ObamaCare Origination Challenge Denied

After Supreme Court Justice John Roberts’ legal contortions rewrote ObamaCare’s penalties as taxes in order to find it constitutional, some opponents saw the last chance to overturn the law in the fact that Congress didn’t pass it in the proper way. Revenue-raising bills must originate in the House, but ObamaCare was first passed by the Senate. That hope was dashed Tuesday when the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law isn’t a revenue-raising measure because the tax is “incidental” to the law’s primary purpose. The three-judge panel concluded unanimously, “Some exercises of the taxing power are not subject to the Origination Clause.” This was perhaps the least persuasive case against ObamaCare – even in spite of the fact that ObamaCare amounts to one of the largest tax increases in history – but the wrongheaded interpretation of various judges doesn’t make the law an appropriate use of constitutional power.