OPINION:
It is my sense that the Obamacare “penalty fee” the Supreme Court said was not legal and was actually a tax does not have to be paid because it is not actually law (“Embracers of the Constitution are baffled by what’s really in it,” Page 1, Tuesday).
There are two reasons why this is the case. First, the Constitution does not give the Supreme Court the authority to write or rewrite legislation. That authority is reserved for Congress, with the final legislation approved or rejected by the president of the United States. Second, writing tax legislation is reserved for the House. Therefore, the Obamacare bill must go back to Congress to be rewritten in order to include specific words addressing it as a tax.
It should be noted, too, that the current law pushed through Congress and signed by the president did not call the “penalty fee” a tax because the politicians knew it wouldn’t pass that way. Some will argue that court precedents allow Obamacare to stand as a court-modified document. But this position, too, is invalid because it violates the Constitution, allowing a mere five people to change a law without the approval of “we, the people.”
I submit that until the law is actually rewritten by the Congress and approved by the president, the tax does not actually have to be paid.
CHARLES HEIMACH
Annandale
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