Is the penalty for not buying insurance in the Affordable Care Act (ACA—Obamacare) unconstitutional as a “tax” that originated in the Senate?
Under the Constitution’s Origination Clause, the answer appears to be “no”—the Senate’s decision to add the penalty to the underlying bill was not a violation of that Clause. But under the same provision, most of the remainder of Obamacare may be unconstitutional.
As I reported in February, I have been involved in a multi-month study into the meaning of the Constitution’s Origination Clause and its implications for the ACA. The Origination Clause is the Constitution’s rule that “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.” My project was provoked by several federal lawsuits that claimed that because (1) the Supreme Court has held that the penalty for not buying insurance is a “tax,” and (2) the ACA law really originated in the Senate, therefore (3) the penalty was unconstitutionally adopted.
Here’s how the ACA became law: First, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3590, a bill to expand a tax credit and force certain corporations to pay income taxes earlier than previously required. When H.R. 3590 went to the Senate, that body “amended” it to delete all six pages in the bill and insert the 2076-page ACA. This amendment “in the nature of a substitute” included not only the penalty for failing to purchase insurance, but a mass of other new taxes, appropriations, and regulations. The Senate then adopted the revised H.R. 3590 and sent it back to the House, which passed it.
Many people instinctively react against this procedure, but instinctive reaction is not the same as constitutional law. My job was to reconstruct the actual meaning of the Origination Clause, not expound what I would like it to mean. I therefore reviewed the debates over the Clause at the Constitutional Convention and in the ensuing ratification contest. I then turned to 18th century legislative vocabulary, procedures, and practice. This required reviewing 50 years of British parliamentary records; examining several decades of legislative records in 14 American colonies and states; consulting 18th century treatises and other writings; and reviewing the records of the Continental Congress (1774-81), the Confederation Congress (1781-89), and the First Federal Congress (1789-91). Here is what I learned:
* Any measure that alters the tax code to raise or reduce revenue is a “Bill for raising Revenue.” Another way to state it is that any law that can be justified only by the Taxation Clause (I-8-1) rather than by some other enumerated power is a “Bill for raising Revenue.” Thus, the original H.R. 3590 qualified as a “Bill for raising Revenue” as the Constitution uses the term, even though it was revenue-neutral or revenue-negative.
* The Constitution permits the Senate to adopt “Amendments” to “Bills for raising Revenue.”
* The Senate’s “Amendment” of H.R. 3590 was what is called a “complete substitute.” I could find no precedents for complete substitutes in British parliamentary practice, but they did exist in early American practice.
* The constitutional term “Amendments” is broad, but not unlimited in scope. As the Founders used the word, an “amendment” might make virtually any kind of alteration in the underlying bill, BUT it had to address the same subject matter as the underlying bill. This rule also applied to amendments that, like H.R. 3590, were complete substitutes.
* For constitutional purposes, all tax/revenue measures are deemed to address the same subject as all other tax/revenue measures. So even an amendment (or substitute) that completely changes the taxes in the underlying bill is a valid amendment.
* Given the Supreme Court’s decision that the penalty for not buying insurance is a “tax” (a decision that was erroneous, but is now settled law) the Senate was within the rightful scope of its amendment power by adding the penalty and other taxes to the original H.R. 3950.
* However, the original H.R. 3590 addressed only taxes. The House could have added appropriations or regulations, but it did not. The Senate not only added the penalty/tax. It also inserted appropriations for various purposes and regulations on health care providers, employers, and insurance companies.
*The added regulations did NOT address the same subject (revenue) as the underlying H.R. 3590. It was therefore outside the amendment power of the Senate to add those regulations. From an originalist point of view, those regulations are void as never properly enacted, even though the House voted for them.
* This is true even though the Senate could have originated the regulations itself in a separate bill. When amending a revenue bill, the Senate does not have power as broad as it does when originating its own (non-revenue) bills.
* In addition, the Senate inserted appropriations into H.R. 3590. These probably was also outside the Senate’s amendment power.
A court constrained by the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision, but otherwise applying the Constitution’s original meaning, should rule as follows: It should uphold the ACA’s taxes, including the penalty for not buying insurance, but strike down the regulations and appropriations in the law.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or “Obamacare”) imposes a sliding-scale financial penalty on people who do not buy health insurance conforming to federal standards. In NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court upheld the penalty as a constitutional “tax.”
But that may not be the last word on its constitutionality.
A lawsuit brought by Matt Sissel, a self-employed artist, contends that the penalty is void under a provision in the Constitution called the Origination Clause: Article I, Section 7, Clause 1. It reads as follows:
“All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
As a tax, Sissel argues, the financial penalty is “for raising Revenue.” He then notes how Obamacare was adopted: First, the House passed H.R. 3590, which created a first-time homebuyer tax credit for armed services personnel and “accelerated” certain estimated corporate income tax payments. Next, when H.R. 3590 came to the Senate, that body gutted it and inserted the PPACA instead, which the Senate then passed. Finally, the House passed the new H.R. 3590. So as a practical matter, Sissel says, the Obamacare tax originated in the Senate—not, as constitutionally required, in the House.
If Sissel is right, then the same defect may afflict other levies imposed by Obamacare, such as the one on medical devices.
The case turns on two overarching issues:
(1) Is the penalty for not buying insurance a measure “for raising Revenue?” and
(2) Did the Senate’s action in gutting the original bill and replacing it with Obamacare constitute an “Amendment?”
Only if the penalty was “for raising Revenue” did the Origination Clause apply. Only if the Senate’s changes exceeded the scope of permissible “Amendment” (and thereby constituted an entirely new bill) did Obamacare unconstitutionally arise in the Senate.
In defending the law, the government argues that the penalty, even if the Supreme Court calls it a “tax,” was imposed for independent regulatory reasons, not to raise money. The government also argues that “gut and replace” is a permissible amendment procedure.
In my investigations, I’ve found—at least thus far—that the answer to the first question is a lot easier than the answer to the second.
As to the first question: It is clear that the financial penalty in Obamacare was adopted primarily to regulate the economy pursuant to the Commerce Power (Commerce Clause + Necessary and Proper Clause). If the penalty were valid as a regulatory measure, it would not be “for raising Revenue,” either under the Constitution’s original meaning or under Supreme Court precedent.
The problem for the government, however, is that in NFIB v. Sebelius the Supreme Court held that the penalty was NOT valid as regulatory measure because it exceeded Congress’s Commerce Power. The penalty’s sole constitutional justification was the revenue it could raise—estimated at $4 billion per year by 2017. (Recent revelations about the number of people who are spurning Obamacare-approved health insurance suggests this number may be far too low.)
In other words, the Obamacare penalty for not buying insurance is valid only as a revenue-raising measure, and the NFIB v. Sebelius decision compels the courts to treat it as such.
The second issue is whether the Senate’s action in gutting the original bill and replacing it with something else constituted an “Amendment.” If it was not, then Obamacare’s levies really arose in the Senate, and are unconstitutional.
This is a much harder question to answer. It requires first addressing a number of others:
* What was the understanding of those who ratified the Constitution as to the scope of an amendment?
* If the ratifiers’ understanding on this subject is not clearly ascertainable, then what was the original public meaning of the term “Amendment?” Answering this question requires going beyond the public discussion during the ratification debates and into sources such as 18th century dictionaries and treatises, and the records of contemporaneous legislatures—specifically of the British Parliament, the American colonial assemblies, and the legislatures of the newly independent states.
Previous treatments of these “originalist” questions in law journal articles are distinctly mediocre. This is a common problem because, as I have pointed out elsewhere, most legal scholars are ill-equipped for historical work or too agenda-driven to accomplish it reliably.
Anyway, the questions continue:
* If the scope of “Amendment” requires a subject-matter connection to the original bill, then how much connection is necessary? The original H.R. 3590 was not about health care or health insurance at all. Does that mean that the Senate changes exceeded the scope of “Amendment?”
* But the original H.R. 3590 was connected to revenue! It would have amended the Internal Revenue Code to create a tax credit. Is this sufficient?
* If not, consider that the original H.R. 3590 not only helped a popular group (armed services homebuyers), but it also “paid for” their benefit by sticking it to an unpopular group (larger corporations). Specifically, the measure “accelerated” estimated corporate income taxes. Instead of larger corporations having to pay 100.25% of their taxes in advance, the original H.R. 3590 would have required them to pay 100.75% in advance. Of course, the corporations would have gotten their excess back eventually. But, as everyone in government knows, estimated tax “acceleration” is really a forced loan that makes cash flow to the government faster so as to create bookkeeping entries that cover other shortfalls. It is a financial stunt to enable politicians to effectively increase taxes by giving the government earlier use of citizens’ money, while enabling those politicians to claim they really didn’t raise taxes. So if this part of H.R. 3590 raised money, is this a sufficient connection with the Obamacare taxes to render Obamacare a mere “Amendment?”
I don’t know. But the investigation continues. Stay tuned.
Does a state have the right to nullify federal statutes the state considers unconstitutional? This depends largely on how you define “nullification.” It also depends on what you mean by “right” and what kind of document you understand the Constitution to be. In other words, it depends on your premises.
Unfortunately, people often discuss—and debate, and attack each other over—the merits or demerits of nullification without making their premises clear. The result is much quarreling among people who are fundamentally on the same side.
Historically, “nullification” was defined quite narrowly. It referred to a formal ordinance of a state legislature or state convention that declared a federal law void within the boundaries of the state. The state might or might not make the ordinance conditional, and it might or might not impose criminal or civil penalties on persons attempting to enforce the federal enactment. We can refer to this as the narrow, or historical, definition of nullification. It is traditionally credited to the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, drafted by Thomas Jefferson.
Today the term often is used in a much broader sense by advocates, by opponents, and often by the press. So used, it refers as well to other mechanisms a state may deploy to assert its prerogatives against federal overreaching—that is, to other methods of what James Madison called “interposition.” The Tenth Amendment Center often uses “nullification” in this broad way.
Thus, “interposition” (by Madison’s definition) or “nullification” (by a broad definition) can refer to state actions such as:
* State legislative and executive expressions of opinion against a federal measure;
* State lobbying pressure to get the measure changed or repealed;
* State-sponsored lawsuits against federal actions deemed unconstitutional;
* Political coordination among states to promote change or repeal;
* Refusal of states to accept federal grants-in-aid attached to obnoxious conditions;
* Refusal of states to allow their officials to cooperate in the execution of federal programs;
* Refusal of states to render a particular activity that is a federal crime illegal under state law as well (e.g., the use of marijuana in Colorado and Washington); and
* The state application and convention process of Article V.
Constitutional wonks will recall that Madison anticipated most of these in Federalist No. 46, and included the others in later writings.
All of the interposition methods listed above are perfectly legal and constitutional. For example, there is certainly no requirement that a state duplicate federal crimes in its own statute books, and the Supreme Court has said repeatedly (and held expressly in the NFIB v. Sebelius, the Obamacare case) that the federal government may not “commandeer” state officials in service of federal policy.
Clearly, calling these modes of interposition “nullification” does not render them unconstitutional or wrong.
On the other hand, there are methods of interposition that the Constitution does not authorize. In other words, they are extra-constitutional. Nevertheless, the Founders believed that natural law reserves them to the people in some circumstances.
The most dramatic illustration of an extra-constitutional remedy reserved by natural law is the right of armed revolution, which Madison also discussed in Federalist No. 46. He later stressed that the people should resort to extra-constitutional methods only when the constitutional compact has been irretrievably broken.
Both historically and today, the most serious nullification disputes center on whether states enjoy the constitutional prerogative of adopting formal nullification ordinances. In other words: Does a state have the constitutional power to void what it perceives to be an unconstitutional federal law?
Let’s try to isolate some of the issues:
First: It is clear that in the extreme conditions justifying revolution, resistance need not be conducted solely by private individuals or groups. States may participate officially, as the colonies/states did during the years 1775-83. This is the scenario Madison presented in Federalist No. 46. Obviously, in these circumstances a state may declare federal law void within its boundaries. But this power flows from natural law, not from the Constitution (which in revolutionary circumstances, you recall, would have been irretrievably broken).
Second: What of our current situation—that is,when there is no revolution, the union continues, federal laws are still widely obeyed, and the Constitution is still largely in operation? In those circumstances, may a state declare void a judicially-sustained federal law that the state deems unconstitutional? The answer to this question turns largely on your conclusion as to the fundamental nature of the Constitution.
Third: What is that fundamental nature?
The Constitution has been characterized as:
* A compact (i.e., contract) to which only the states are parties, by which the states granted power to federal officials. This is the pure interstate compact theory, expressed in Jefferson’s 1798 Kentucky Resolutions.
* A “compound” compact, created by the people but to which the states are parties. This was apparently Madison’s post-ratification view (see, for example, the equivocal wording about the nature of the Constitution in his Notes on Nullification), and may have underlain his 1798 Virginia Resolution.
* A popular grant: that is, a grant of power from the people—mostly to federal legislators and officials, but in some cases to state legislative authorities (as in the Time, Places, and Manner Clause) or to state legislators (as in Article V). This view was expressed by some of the seven state legislatures that formally repudiated the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. It also was Chief Justice John Marshall’s conclusion in the famous case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819).
You can make the best case for narrow-definition nullification as a constitutional prerogative if you adopt the first of the three alternatives. The basic idea is that if other states have broken the compact by letting their agent (the federal government) run amok, then aggrieved states (compacting parties) have the right to protect themselves.
On the other hand, if you adopt the popular grant theory it is much more difficult to justify nullification. This is because the people, not the states, are the parties. By this analysis, the states may, as agents of the people, protest, sue, and protect their own governmental operations, but they may not void federal actions unilaterally, except by their legislators using their delegated power to amend under Article V.
And if you subscribe to Madison’s mixed theory, then, as Madison pointed out in 1830 and again in 1834, there also are conceptual problems with considering nullification as a constitutional right rather than just a natural law remedy.
Fourth: So, again, we must ask, “Which of the three theories of the Constitution is correct?”—state compact, compound compact, or popular grant?
The answer to this question depends on the dominant understanding of (or meaning to) the people who ratified the Constitution between 1787 and 1790.
The answer does not depend on what Thomas Jefferson or James Madison wrote in the Resolutions of 1798, or on what other states proclaimed when they rejected those Resolutions. Even more clearly, the answer does not depend on what Chief Justice Marshall concluded in 1819, or what Madison, John C. Calhoun, or anyone else said in the 1830s.
Rather, determining the fundamental nature of the Constitution requires reconstructing the sense of the document to those who ratified it.
Anyone who has made an honest study of the ratification has to offer conclusions on this particular subject with humility. The ratification record can be confusing and the prevailing meaning at the time can be hard to reconstruct. For example, it is not sufficient to note that the Founders referred to the Constitution as a “compact.” This is because they used that word to refer both to governments established by states (confederations) and to governments established among the people alone.
Nor is it sufficient, as do some writers popular among constitutionalists, to focus only the ratification debates within selected states. You have to view the wider picture. Similarly, it is insufficient to rely merely on a few key Founders, such as Madison, Hamilton, or Jefferson. There were 1648 ratifying delegates—not just two or three—and many had important things to say. So did the orators, newspaper writers, and pamphleteers who influenced them. Jefferson was a great man, but his opinions on the meaning of the Constitution have little value, since as our ambassador to France, he did not participate in the framing or ratification.
Nor can you rely only on the express language of the ratification debate. You have to get into the heads of the ratifiers by reading what they read, and understanding their jurisprudence and their customs.
This is not the place to get into the details (this posting is already too compendious). Suffice to say that long study of the ratification record convinced me that most of the ratifiers probably thought of the Constitution as a grant from the American people rather than as a compact among states, pure or compound (as I once thought). I set forth several of my reasons in The Original Constitution: What It Actually Said and Meant.
At this point, I’ll explain just one reason. (But for for another see here.) It has to do with how 18th century English speakers drafted and read legal documents.
The Constitution famously begins with the phrase “We the People.” States are not mentioned. Now, the script and the placement of that phrase was no accident. It followed the custom by which legal documents granting power listed the grantor first. Thus, in royal charters granting rights and privileges to citizens, the king—that is, the grantor—always appeared first in large and ornate script. (A wholly typical example is the royal charter of Dartmouth College.) Although the Articles of Confederation had given that placement to the states, the Constitution afforded it to the people alone.
How do we know the delegates to the ratifying conventions caught the implications of this? Because some of them said so. For example, William Findley, an Anti-Federalist spokesman at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention, observed:
“In the Preamble, it is said, ‘We the People,” and not ‘We the States,’ which therefore is a compact between individuals entering into society, and not between separate states enjoying independent power and delegating a portion of that power for their common benefit.”
And Findley’s leading adversary at the convention, James Wilson, agreed with him on this point.
Anti-Federalists not only understood, they objected vehemently. Patrick Henry, chief Anti-Federalist at the Virginia ratifying convention, demanded to know: “Who authorized [the Framers]to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states?”
Finally: Once the pure state compact theory falls, it is very hard to justify nullification (narrowly defined) as a constitutional remedy. It remains instead a remedy reserved by natural law for when the Constitution has wholly failed—in other words, in situations justifying revolution.
Lessons For Federalism from Colorado’s Pot “Legalization”
Lessons For Federalism from Colorado’s Pot “Legalization”
(An earlier version of this post appeared on the website of The American Thinker.)
It’s ironic that one of the few “states’ rights” battles won in recent times was Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana in the teeth of federal laws to the contrary.
Pot really isn’t legal in Colorado, of course. The federal government still bans the stuff. And in Gonzales v. Raich (2005), the Supreme Court held that the federal ban is valid and the supreme law of the land. Last I looked, Colorado was still part of “the land.”
But as is its constitutional prerogative, Colorado has removed its own (i.e., state), criminal penalties from the sale of marijuana to adults over 21, so long as certain regulations are followed and participants pony up specified kickbacks to the state in the form of taxes and fees. President Obama’s practice of disregarding laws he doesn’t like has left Colorado with at least a temporary victory.
Yet none of these has provoked push-back so successfully as Washington’s ban on a totally unnecessary recreational drug. And—even more ironically—a drug that, unlike the targets of so many other regulations, really can be harmful. Perhaps the only comparable success against federal encroachment was repeal of federal Prohibition, another ban on a potentially harmful recreational drug. Both these instances are reminiscent of an even earlier American reaction when faced with government restrictions on yet another of life’s unnecessary pleasures: tea.
From Colorado’s marijuana “legalization” some federalism advocates draw a conclusion that is both (1) obvious and (2) wrong. The conclusion is that the only way to restore constitutional limits is for constitutionalists to form alliances with hard core “progressives” in areas of common concern. After all, wasn’t it a right-and-left-wing coalition that successfully repealed Colorado’s marijuana ban?
There are, however, at least two problems with this approach. First, the few areas of common concern are mostly very small and of limited importance. “Progressives” very rarely take a genuine pro-federalism position, and when they do, the issue is usually narrow. By any objective measure, marijuana legalization is small POT-atoes compared to massive programs like Obamacare.
Secondly—and more importantly—victories won by coalitions so disparate are not stable. Today’s “progressive” movement is not controlled by the reasonable liberals of your granddaddy’s generation. Today’s “progressivism” is increasingly a totalitarian movement. In other words, a critical mass of its adherents genuinely believe that there are no limits to what they can make government do to the rest of us.* As is true of other totalitarians, they see any victory won for freedom as merely opening the door for more coercion.
There are many examples:
* “Progressives” campaigned for a “woman’s right to choose” contraception or abortion, but no sooner did this become government policy, than they began promote laws forcing conscientious religious objectors to pay for conception and abortion.
* Most “progressives” favored legalizing homosexual behavior (and I agree) under the banner of freedom. But no sooner had they won freedom for this form of behavior than they began to use government to promote it—by adopting policies that grant insurance and other civil privileges to homosexual behavior at others’ expense and by deploying “anti-discrimination” laws to intimidate, silence, and punish dissenters.
* During the campaigns to legalize previously illegal sexual behavior, one of the Left’s key arguments was that government does not belong in such personal decisions. But they sang quite a different song when the opportunity arose to pen all of us up in Obamacare.
Only a fool would think the hard Left will be satisfied with freedom or use, or not use, marijuana. Within a short time, “progressives” will begin to agitate for direct or indirect public subsidies for use, and for government crackdowns on anyone who objects to it. (Possible first steps: Making it illegal to refuse to hire or serve users and further subsidizing health care for pot abusers.)
I believe the battle for federalism can still be won—and that, indeed, that it will be won. But it has to be won with a coalition that will preserve the victory. History teaches that coalitions between democrats and totalitarians do not last long: If the totalitarians remain in the coalition, they will quickly take over (cf. Czechoslovakia, 1948). Conservatives and libertarians should, therefore, seek their allies from the broad center—the Main Street political moderates—by convincing them of the need to return to constitutional restrictions on federal authority.
In the short term, that may be a tougher victory. But once won, it will be a far broader and more ensuring one.
* * * *
* In 2009, I ran an experiment: During a controversy over the University of Montana’s use of state resources to publish soft pornography, I challenged the “progressives” frequenting a well-traveled web site (1) whether they would agree that promoting porn should not be a government function and (2) if they could identify any sphere of life whatsoever that they thought was outside government’s proper scope. I received many responses to my questions—quite a few of them vulgar—but not a single affirmative one.
The Meaning of the Commerce Power and Congress’s and the Courts’ Use (And Abuse) Of It
The Meaning of the Commerce Power and Congress’s and the Courts’ Use (And Abuse) Of It
Are you interested in the true meaning of, and limits on, the Constitution’s much-abused Commerce Power? In a speech at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on November 19, 2013, I outlined the intended scope of the power, how I reached my conclusions, and how the Supreme Court has stretched the Commerce Power far beyond its intended scope.
