Pending Obamacare lawsuit threatens to wipe out the entire law in one fell swoop

I and many others wish this would happen to this Unconstitutional piece of legislation. Since Chief Justice Roberts ruled the penalty a “tax” , then Obamacare is definitely unconstitutional, because according to the Constitution, ALL taxes MUST originate in the House and Obamacare came from the Senate.

This would be phenomenal if it actually comes to pass, not to mention very ironic:

WASHINGTON TIMES – “Obamacare” looks increasingly inevitable, but one lawsuit making its way through the court system could pull the plug on the sweeping federal health care law.

A challenge filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional because the bill originated in the Senate, not the House. Under the Origination Clause of the Constitution, all bills raising revenue must begin in the House.

The Supreme Court upheld most provisions of the act in June, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took pains in the majority opinion to define Obamacare as a federal tax, not a mandate. That was when the Sacramento, Calif.-based foundation’s attorneys had their “aha” moment.

“The court there quite explicitly says, ‘This is not a law passed under the Commerce Clause; this is just a tax,’” foundation attorney Timothy Sandefur said at a Cato Institute forum on legal challenges to the health care act. “Well, then the Origination Clause ought to apply. The courts should not be out there carving in new exceptions to the Origination Clause.”

The Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the challenge in November, arguing that the high court has considered only eight Origination Clause cases in its history and “has never invalidated an act of Congress on that basis.”

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to rule on the Justice Department’s motion “any day now,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Paul J. Beard.

The challenge citing the Origination Clause isn’t the only lawsuit against Obamacare, but it is the only one that has the potential to wipe out the entire act in one fell swoop. Other claims, notably the freedom-of-religion cases dealing with the birth control requirement, nibble at the fringes but would leave the law largely intact.

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Mold? Leaky Roof? Obama Administration Says All Americans Must Have ‘Healthy Housing’

I just don’t remember the Constitution authorizing such a  thing!

Under the broad banner of “health,” the federal government not only is telling Americans what to eat, it’s also telling us to make our homes safer.

This week, the Obama administration released a “bold new vision for addressing the nation’s health and economic burdens caused by preventable hazards associated with the home.”

The project has a name: “Advancing Healthy Housing: A Strategy for Action.”

“People in the United States spend about 70% of their time in a home,” the announcement said.

“Currently, millions of U.S. homes have moderate to severe physical housing problems, including dilapidated structure; roofing problems; heating, plumbing, and electrical deficiencies; water leaks and intrusion; pests; damaged paint; and high radon gas levels. These conditions are associated with a wide range of health issues, including unintentional injuries, respiratory illnesses like asthma and radon-induced lung cancer, lead poisoning, result in lost school days for children, as well as lost productivity in the labor force.”

According to the Obama administration, the health and economic burdens from preventable hazards associated with both subsidized and privately owned homes cost billions of dollars.

The new strategy “unifies” federal efforts to advance healthy housing — “demonstrating the connection between housing conditions and residents’ health.”

The federal partners pushing healthy housing include the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Surgeon General, and Energy Department.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan says the federal government must do “everything we can to ensure that individuals and families have a healthy place to call home.” He said the strategy “will help the federal government unify action (on) controlling and preventing major housing-related exposures and hazards.”

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the government now has a “specific plan for action to address radon and other preventable hazards found in homes across the country.” The strategy, she added, “is a critical step” toward ensuring that “Americans in all communities have healthy places to live, work and play.”

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America’s Rating as a Free Country Continues to Plummet

This is a sad article for me to post….we are losing our freedoms folks.

Freedom can be defined in many ways. However, one of the greatest indicators of freedom and liberty is economic freedom. True free-market capitalism is the basis of individual liberty. However, America is no longer a top 5 contender, and we haven’t been for a years. Actually, America is barely even in the top 10. The 2012 Index of Economic Freedom study reports that America continues to fail. Who took first place in economic freedom in 2012? The

Source: http://www.gfmag.com/tools/global-database/economic-data/12067-economic-freedom-by-country.html#axzz2JI3AV7Pz

answer may surprise you. It was Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s score was an 89.9%, which was a 0.2% increase from 2011. Following Hong Kong in order: Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Canada, Chile, Mauritius, Ireland, and finally America at number 10. America’s economic freedom score was a 76.3%, which is down 1.5% from 2011. In fact, America is no longer even rated as a “Free” nation, which is a title granted only to countries with a score above 80%, but a “Mostly Free” nation. Right behind America rated at number 11 is Denmark. Denmark places the highest total tax pressure on its citizens in the world.

This study takes the following 10 benchmarks into account when rating countries: Freedom from corruption, property rights, individual fiscal freedom, restrained government spending, monetary freedom, business freedom, labor freedom, trade freedom, investment freedom, and financial freedom. As mentioned earlier, economic freedom is more vast than it may sound on the surface. It includes all of the above benchmarks, which affect our everyday lives. Money is not the root of all evil; however it is at the root of our lives and if we are not economically free one must ask themselves if our freedom simply a fallacy. There are 9 other countries more economically free than America and our rating is dropping drastically. In 2010, America was rated number 8.  With the numbers trending down and all of the benchmarks trending towards negative values America’s rating should not be expected to improve when the 2013 ratings are released.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty. -Margaret Thatcher

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ObamaCare Fallout: Walmart Ends Insurance For New Hires

We see this happening more and more, but that is exactly what Obama had in mind when he (and the Health Insurance Companies) structured Obamacare the way they did, in order to move eventually everyone over to the government plan and single payor.

And so the government takeover of our health care system begins:

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post. …

Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. …

Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.

By making the fine for not providing health care cheaper than providing health care, this was always the plan: to encourage employers to send us to the government.

Remember how Obama’s big ObamaCare sell was, “You get to keep the health insurance you have”?

It was all a lie, a hustle, a con, a ruse…

But now it’s the law of the land … forever. (Well maybe not, the States can nullify it)

Breitbart

Obama Admin Tells Court: Hobby Lobby Must Obey HHS Mandate

This type thing is the cause of this type thing:

The Obama administration told a federal court today that the Christian business Hobby Lobby must obey the HHS mandate that forces religious companies to pay for drugs for women that may cause abortions.

The privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate. The company says it would face $1.3 million in fines on a daily basis starting in January if it fails to comply with the mandate, which requires religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-cause drugs that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the business says it is opposing the Health and Human Services “preventive services” mandate, which it says forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the “morning after pill” and “week after pill” in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.

“By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow,” said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. “We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.”

But Kyle Duncan, general counsel of the Becket Fund, talked with National Review today about what the Obama administration told the court:

The administration’s arguments in this case are shocking. Here’s what they are saying: once someone starts a “secular” business, he categorically loses any right to run that business in accordance with his conscience. The business owner simply leaves her First Amendment rights at home when she goes to work at the business she built. Kosher butchers around the country must be shocked to find that they now run “secular” businesses. On this view of the world, even a seller of Bibles is “secular.” Hobby Lobby’s affiliate, Mardel, sells Bibles and other Christian-themed material, but because it makes a profit the government has now declared it “secular.”

The administration’s position here — while astonishing — is actually consistent with its overall view of the place of religion in civil society. After all, this is the administration who argued in the Hosanna-Tabor case last year in the Supreme Court that the religion clauses of the First Amendment offered no special protection to a church’s right to choose its ministers — a position that the Court rejected 9-0. This is the administration which has taken to referring to “freedom of worship” instead of “freedom of religion” — suggesting that religious freedom consists in being free to engage in private rituals and prayers, but not in carrying your religious convictions into public life. And this is the administration who crafted a “religious employer” exemption to the HHS mandate so narrow that a Catholic charity does not qualify for conscience protection if it serves non-Catholic poor people.

As you point out, the administration is trying to justify its rigid stance against religious business owners by saying otherwise they would become a “law unto themselves,” and be able to do all sorts of nasty things to their employees — like force them to attend Bible studies, or fire them if they denied the divinity of Christ. Nonsense. Hobby Lobby isn’t arguing for the right to impose the Greens’ religion on employees, nor for the right to fire employees of different religions. There’s already a federal law that protects employees from religious discrimination and that’s a very good thing. This case is about something entirely different:  it’s about stopping the government from coercing religious business owners. The government wants to fine the Greens if they do not violate their own faith by handing out free abortion drugs, and now it’s saying they don’t even have the right to complain in court about it

Duncan said the onerous provisions of the HHS mandate “will hit Hobby Lobby in about two months — on January 1, 2013. At that point, it will face the choice of dropping employee health insurance altogether (and paying about $26 million a year in penalties), or continuing its current plan (which will expose it to about $1.3 million in fines per day). So it is not hard to imagine why the Greens felt they had no choice but to go to court.”

U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton did not rule on the company’s request for an injunction but noted Hobby Lobby’s deadline for compliance.

“This does raise a lot of new and different issues,” he said. “There’s not a lot of guidance out there.”

Life News

‘We’re Still Home of the Brave, But We’re Not the Land of the Free Anymore’

Shame on John Boehner…..

A group of freshmen congressmen on Wednesday said that a regulation issued under Obamacare by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has taken freedom of religion away from Americans.

The regulation that requires health plans to offer sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients free of charge became effective today, Aug. 1. It has been unanimously denounced by the Catholic bishops of the United States as “unjust and illegal mandate” that forces Catholic individuals, business owners and institutions to act against the teachings of their faith.

“We’re still home of the brave, but we’re not the land of the free anymore,” said Rep. Billy Long (R.-Mo.)

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives could stop this regulation that Republican members and the Catholic Church have called an attack on religious liberty by prohibiting funding for it in the next continuing resolution to fund the government after Sept. 30. However, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and other House Republicans have indicated  that they will fund the implementation of the regulation.

Despite his apparent intention to fund it, Boehner himself has described the regulation as “an unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country.”

On Tuesday, Rep. Long was joined at the U.S. Capitol in denouncing the regulation by Representatives Mike Kelly (R.-Pa.), Austin Scott (R-Ga.), Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.), Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.), Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-N.Y.), and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) in vowing to stand against the regulation.

“It’s outrageous that this administration believes it’s within their power to force people to violate their right of religion if it interferes with this administration’s agenda,” said Nunnelee.  “It should disturb people of all faiths, or for that matter people of no faith at all, that President Obama has such a low opinion of the First Amendment that he would trample on these rights.”

At least 154 members of Congress have already denounced the HHS “preventive services” regulation that mandates that nearly all health insurance plans in the United States must offer sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge.

“The federal government was put in place to protect our rights, not to grant those rights,” Buerkle added.

Rep. Kelly said August 1 would now forever be ingrained in American history.

“I know in your mind you can think of the times that America was attacked: one is December 7th, that’s the Pearl Harbor date,” he said.  “The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack.”

“I want you to remember August 1, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom,” said Kelly.   “That is a date that will live in infamy along with those other dates.”

“The question is if not us, who, if not now, when?” Kelly said.  “It is our turn, there is no option, we have to stand up now and defend our Constitution.”

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CBO: Obamacare to Cover Millions Fewer Than Before Supreme Court Decision

 

Earlier today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an updated cost estimate for Obamacare that showed that the law will cost less over 10 years than last predicted—because fewer people will be covered.

Now, although Obamacare spends more than $1 trillion, CBO predicts it will leave 30 million Americans uninsured, falling far short of what was promised.

The reason for the changes to the law’s cost projection is the recent Supreme Court ruling. Though the Court allowed Obamacare’s individual mandate to stand as a tax, it deemed a separate provision—the Medicaid expansion—to be unconstitutional. As a result, states can choose not to expand their Medicaid programs and are no longer at risk of losing all their federal Medicaid dollars if they don’t. As Heritage health policy expert Nina Owcharenko explains, “If the Administration’s attempt to centralize health care decision making in Washington was unworkable, its unconstitutional imposition on the states has made its problems even worse.”

As a result of the Court’s decision, the outlook for the law has changed. Here are the main takeaways from the CBO’s latest report:

• Obamacare will cost less… The new CBO scoring shows that the net cost of Obamacare will be $84 billion less over the next 10 years than predicted in its last analysis in March 2012. Spending on the Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion will fall by $289 billion, while increased spending on the exchanges to cover some of those who will no longer qualify for Medicaid will cost $210 billion. The law will now add $1.17 trillion in new government spending over 10 years—paid for by massive tax hikes on all Americans and robbing money from the Medicare program.
• …Because more people will be uninsured. Obamacare will cost less because it will insure fewer people. While the Medicaid expansion extended to all individuals below 138 percent of the federal poverty line, the exchange subsidies are only available to those earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level, which means only a portion of would-be new Medicaid enrollees will qualify for subsidies. In 2022, this will add 3 million more to the number of Americans who will still be uninsured under Obamacare.
• Obamacare falls far short of its promise for universal coverage. Since day one, it’s been clear that Obamacare will not achieve universal coverage, and every time CBO revisits the law, the numbers show just that. In March 2010, when the law passed, CBO predicted that there would be 22 million people still without insurance in 2019. In March 2012, the estimate increased to 27 million in 2022. Now, the number has once again increased—to 30 million. So Obamacare leaves just as many people uninsured as it covers.
• Massive uncertainty underlies CBO’s estimate. According to CBO, “what states will be able to do and what they will decide to do are both highly uncertain. As a result…[the] estimates reflect an assessment of the probabilities of different outcomes…in the middle of the distribution of possible outcomes.” As CBO points out, states’ decisions to expand or not expand Medicaid hinge on a number of factors, including their budget outlooks. States that decide to expand would face “a large extra cost.”

Over the last two years, Obamacare has shown itself to be a law muddled with unintended consequences, unworkable provisions, and costly, ineffective new programs. Today’s report from CBO shows that Americans can expect this trend to continue, driving home once again that the health law will not achieve what it promised and needs to be repealed.

Heritage blog

Mike Kelly Anti Big Government Speech Gets Major Applause!

CONGRESSMAN Kelly’s  ANTI-BIG GOVERNMENT RANT GETS STANDING OVATION ON HOUSE FLOOR

Congressman tells Conservative Activists that fighting for the Constitution is a losing battle

This is unbelieveable that a especially Republican Congressman would say this. What is he thinking?…..I’ll tell you, he appears not to be thinking at all. We need term limits and to get these type people out of office as fast as possible.

What happens when a Republican Congressman tells Conservative Activists that fighting for the Constitution is a losing battle? Watch the fireworks as Unite In Action’s Director of Legal Affairs KrisAnne Hall and 912 Project National Co-Chair, Unite In Action President, Stephani Scruggs respond.

This took place at The National Republican Club of Capitol Hill, commonly known as the Capitol Hill Club, in Washington DC on June 28th, 2012 with Michelle Bachmann, Rep Gosar and several other members of congress as well as The Tea Party.Net. with syndicated talk show host Rusty Humphries as the MC. It was broadcast on LiveStream by The Tea Party.Net

Visit us at http://uniteinaction.org

House Bill Targets Birth Control Mandate Fine

We don’t need a bill for the birth control mandate, we have the 1st amendment and the birth control mandate violates the 1st amendment.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.………..”

GOP lawmakers are hoping to do away with the Obamacare requirement that all employers provide birth control in their insurance plans.

House Republicans are proposing legislation that would bar the government from fining religious employers who refuse to provide birth control because of their beliefs.

Under the federal healthcare plan, employers who don’t comply with the mandate will be taxed $100 a day per employee. That means employers would end up paying more than $36,000 per employee annually.

“If taxes are levied and enforced, there will be no religious-affiliated institutions left in this country,” Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the bill’s author, said.

“Religious-affiliated institutions have been one of the ways that there has been diversity provided in education, in healthcare, and in various types of social services,” he continued. “I don’t think they should be taxed out of business and neither do my co-sponsors.”

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