The Supreme Court may have ruled once on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, but the debate about the law’s constitutionality is far from settled.
Forty members of the House of Representatives, led by Trent Franks (R–AZ), have filed an amicus brief in the latest case challenging the constitutionality of the Obama Administration’s crowning achievement (or failure, depending on your perspective). The lawsuit claims that the Obamacare legislation violates Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the Constitution, otherwise known as the Origination Clause.
In last year’s surprising and oft-criticized opinion in NFIB v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court upheld the act under Congress’s authority “To lay and collect Taxes” under the Spending Clause of the Constitution. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, found that, despite the plain text of the statute, the individual mandate was actually a tax and not a penalty.
The Origination Clause provides: “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” Our Founding Fathers understood that the power to tax, if abused, involved the power to destroy. They viewed the Origination Clause as a safeguard for liberty by insisting that the power to initiate new taxes should be left with the lawmakers who were most directly accountable to voters—members of the House, who are elected every two years in local districts.
