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Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 23, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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that label had been avoided by proponents of the bill

Right, when Congress itself functionally says "this law is not a tax," the Court has historically deferred to that. It's similar to the shenanigans (still) pulled by many cities who levy "fees" and "fines" that often seem more like taxes (compare also state universities who are sometimes forbidden from raising tuition, who then raise "fees" instead). When neither the proponents nor the opponents of the bill claim it's a proper tax, that makes the class of people thinking it's a proper tax pretty small (analytically, limited only to those who both don't care either way and for whatever reason have a strong opinion about calling money collected by the IRS "taxes" rather than "fees"). Roberts' decision heaped motivated judicial reasoning atop legislative shenanigans. To his credit, I suppose, that has been the primary function of the Supreme Court for most of the 20th century, but that doesn't mean it's a good way to do things.

When neither the proponents nor the opponents of the bill claim it's a proper tax

I'm not sure if you're making a distinction with "proper" tax, but opponents, heck even Democrats, definitely claimed it was a tax, and it was a live enough question to get addressed in a one-on-one (sorry, it's an amp link):

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. that's not true, George. the -- for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase....

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it may be fair, it may be good public policy...

OBAMA: No, but -- but, George, you -- you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I -- I don't think I'm making it up. Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

OBAMA: George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the dictionary to check on the definition. I mean what...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/ThisWeek/Politics/transcript-president-barack-obama/story%3fid=8618937

Stephanopoulos in that exchange appears to be saying that requiring you to pay for insurance is essentially a tax. Look at Obama's claim:

...for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase...

What SCOTUS decided was not that paying for insurance is a tax, but that the resultant penalty if you don't is a tax--even though fines are not generally regarded as taxes. So this sound bite is not on point; they're literally talking about something else.

They're not talking about something else, though. Did you read the full conversation? I just quoted that bit (and elided some) because I found Stepho's pulling out a dictionary and President Obama's swift about-face on "words have a meaning" amusing. But prior to that bit, it's quite clear they're discussing a penalty (Shared Responsibility Payment, "responsibility" being the buzzword) for not buying insurance:

STEPHANOPOULOS: ...during the campaign. Under this mandate, the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't. How is that not a tax?

OBAMA: (evasion evasion)... we've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can and you actually can afford health insurance, but you've just decided, you know what, I want to take my chances. And then you get hit by a bus and you and I have to pay for the emergency room care, that's...

STEPHANOPOULOS: That may be, but it's still a tax increase.

OBAMA: No. That's not true, George.

You're correct that in 2012 SCOTUS ruled the penalty (which is what makes the purchase a "mandate" rather than a friendly request) a tax--it's the only way Congress has power to impose such a thing. It's simply amusing because of how hard the administration has pushed "it's not a tax!", then subsequently had to go to court and argue it was a tax.

then subsequently had to go to court and argue it was a tax

But even then they didn't really argue that it was a tax. The Obama administration argued that the penalty--and they definitely continued at that point to call it a penalty--was constitutional. There is an attenuated sense in which they claimed it was a "tax" at this point, in that they made an argument in the alternative that even if the penalty was otherwise inappropriate, it was permissible under Congress' taxation powers. That's the (stupid) argument Roberts seized on in seeking to preserve Obamacare, but until his decision came out, the "it's a tax" argument was widely regarded as pretextual at best. When I said that "essentially no one" thought of it as a tax, I don't mean "literally nobody floated this argument ever," I mean I was up to my eyeballs in debates (mostly with other lawyers) about this issue at the time and I just never encountered a serious and well-developed claim that the question turned on "it's a tax." This was surely in part because opponents wanted Obamacare to fail entirely, and proponents (like Obama himself) had very vocally insisted that it's not a tax.

But this is all a weirdly autistic tangent anyway, given that even if I just had a wildly idiosyncratic experience at the time, and you are totally correct that there was some substantial contingent of people who believed the penalty was a tax all along--then my warning about the weird directions SCOTUS might take the Minnesota case is all the more true.

the "it's a tax" argument was widely regarded as pretextual at best.

Again I'm gonna have to differ here, and I think the Stephanopoulos interview bears me out. George brought out a dictionary and Obama handwaved away the meaning of "tax", for gosh sake.

was up to my eyeballs in debates (mostly with other lawyers) about this issue at the time and I just never encountered a serious and well-developed claim that the question turned on "it's a tax."

What question, precisely? "Can Congress make people pay this" or "Is a penalty for inaction constitutional"? Because, if it's the latter, your lawyer friends missed the forest for the trees, I'd say.

this is all a weirdly autistic tangent

You know, I seem to be called/implied to be autistic fairly frequently online. Maybe I should get checked or something. Is there a test? To me, if it was important enough for you to use as a point in your post, it's important enough to warrant accuracy, or further exploration if needed. If we retcon the shit out of history, we can't learn much from it.

If we retcon the shit out of history, we can't learn much from it.

I spent this whole thread writing primarily as someone who was an insurance-premium-paying adult and licensed attorney throughout Obama's presidency. I was giving you my first-hand testimony about how these things were being discussed at the time by the bulk of the informed people I knew. I don't remember having seen the Stephanopoulos interview at that time. Of course, there are always a lot of people talking about things, and not everything gets recorded. Memories are fickle, but "the record" has its own shortcomings, too. The interview you shared does seem to back me up, though--Obama himself was saying "not a tax," his administration argued "not a tax... unless..." and his opponents argued "not a tax." To say that, because an insignificant number of people were saying "yes it is a tax," it was a tax all along--that's the retcon.

Maybe I should get checked or something. Is there a test?

Oddly enough, I was just talking with some people about this.

I tried that fest and got a 49, pretty well below the bar. I got some points for not using a lot of movie or television quotes in my daily conversation, which I found odd. An online test at Clinical Partners was also pretty sure I'm not autistic. I wonder if it's simply my online persona: I do tend to care about details.

To me, though, details matter: in this case, the detail that

1, Yes, plenty of people claimed it was a tax from the get-go, and

B. Democrats swore up one wall and down the other it wasn't, and the President, ridiculed people for "making up words", then when shown the word in the dictionary ridiculed more instead of addressing the argument.

It was signature, huge legislation passed while wilfully deceiving the American public. I don't see it as an "autistic" or irrelevant detail at all.