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Author: Daniel Himebaugh No one likes to talk about taxes or Congress.  Test me on this.  The next time you're fumbling for a conversation starter, try opening with, "So how about Congress's power to tax and spend?"  And enjoy the silence. Maybe Congress's taxing power isn't the best topic for small talk, ...

Author: Daniel Himebaugh In 2009, before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (colloquially, "Obamacare") became law, President Obama was asked whether a monetary penalty assessed against people who do not buy government-approved health insurance is a "tax."  The president, perhaps recalling his campaign pl ...

Author:  Anne Hayes For all that the administration pooh-poohs the idea that the national healthcare bill is no big constitutional deal, there is no avoiding the fact that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is unprecedented.  For the first time, Congress is mandating that citizens spend t ...

You’ll remember that supporters of the Individual Mandate at first conceded that it was not a tax…and then changed their minds when some judges showed an interest in it, and ruled that the Mandate is a tax, so that federal courts lack jurisdiction to review its constitutionality. Today, however, Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the Offic ...

The first day of oral argument in the Obamacare cases involves jurisdiction, and specifically, a federal statute called the Tax Anti-Injunction Act. This is a law that limits what cases federal courts are allowed to hear: specifically, it holds that federal courts cannot hear a case “for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collectio ...

Professor Akhil Amar is well known to PLF Liberty Blog readers: he’s the guy who likened the Florida decision invalidating the Individual Mandate to the Dred Scott decision that declared black Americans to be less than human. He and Todd Brewster have a new article out today which seeks to defend the Individual Mandate by … ...

In the run-up to the oral arguments in the Obamacare cases, I’ve been doing a series of posts explaining the issues involved. The first installments are listed below; the rest are coming each day between now and the arguments, which begin on Monday. What to look for in the Obamacare arguments First things first: Obamacare and … ...

If you watch the hit television series, The Walking Dead, or if you are a fan of horror movies, you know that zombies are fictional walking corpses with an insatiable hunger for human flesh.  But in many respects, some California politicians act like real zombies.  Upon election to office they are gradually transformed into tax-ghouls with an ...

In the latest episode of the Obamacare saga, hundreds of thousands of insured individuals have begun receiving cancellation letters—which inform recipients that they will not be able to keep their health insurance policy.  These letters fly in the face of the promises President Obama made just a few years ago, when he famously insisted that  ...