To: Brumar89 who wrote (712315 ) 4/29/2013 8:47:59 AM From: FJB 1 Recommendation Respond to Can One Iraq Vet Stop Obamacare? The American Spectator by David CatronSissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services , which Sissel sees as “a battle for my liberty — my freedom to live out my life to the fullest.” This is the only remaining lawsuit that has any chance of bringing down the entire health care law. His lawsuit, which was filed in July of 2010, was put on hold during the run-up to last June’s Supreme Court decision to uphold most of Obamacare. Ironically, that controversial ruling gave his case a new lease on life. In that ruling, the Majority held that the individual mandate was essentially a tax. This finding prompted the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which represents Sissel, to file a new constitutional cause of action based on the way the law was rammed through Congress. What we now know as Obamacare was initially cobbled together in the Senate, and that body of Congress is not permitted by the Constitution to write tax bills. Sissel and his PLF lawyers have therefore amended their complaint to say that the “reform” law violates the Origination Clause. In other words, the health care law the President signed — a law filled with a myriad of new taxes — contains not a single word written in the only legislative body permitted by the Constitution to pass bills for raising revenue. alleges “this purported tax is illegal… it was introduced in the Senate rather than the House, as required by the Constitution’s Origination Clause for new revenue-raising bills (Article I, Section 7).”Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services is languishing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which is considering a motion to dismiss filed by the Obama Justice Department late last year. It’s a virtual certainty that any decision made by that court will be appealed. The primary PLF lawyer in the case says his organization is determined to take the Origination Clause question all the way to the top: “The Supreme Court wasn’t asked and didn’t address this question in the NFIB case.”wrote , “If any act violates the Origination Clause, it would seem to be the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court has never approved the ‘strike-and-replace’ procedure the Congress employed here. This challenge might be a good opportunity to discover whether the Origination Clause is part of the ‘Lost Constitution,’ or whether it is still a part of the written Constitution that Congress must obey.”explaining why he filed his lawsuit and will continue fighting: “My principles, I believe, are the same ones held by our founding fathers. To defend individual freedom, they tried to limit the size of the federal government and what it could do. They could not have conceived of the federal entanglement in people’s personal, private choices that ‘Obamacare’ represents.”
