Not quite understanding the word mandate

The health care penalty is an excise tax. Even if you don’t believe that the Constitution allows the regulation of insurance (and related matters), then Congress still has the ability to “lay and collect taxes”, Ed. So, in your best situation, you’d still have to pay the excise tax for not having insurance.

Jimbo3 on October 25, 2009 at 11:27 AM

Actually, in Texas, every time I have bought a car lately, whether for myself or helping friends and relatives (I love haggling with dealers), the dealer has always asked for proof of insurance from the ultimate buyer (for the current vehicle) before ever starting the paperwork for the new vehicle.

I’m not sure whether there is some exception that one could get from the state if you promised to show up with a trailer and never drive the car on the road, but rather clearly, the general practice is that they won’t let you take possession of the car – OWN the car – without insurance.

–There is no stated exception in Texas if you weren’t going to drive on public roads, although my understanding from another commenter here is that police won’t enforce some laws if you are on private property. Some states have exceptions written into their laws and others don’t. It’s not true in all cases that you don’t have to register your car if you’re only going to drive on private property.

Jimbo3 on October 25, 2009 at 11:33 AM

Looks to me that the following US Supreme Court case would say that the health care excise tax is constitutional, especially since the power to tax is not one limited to the states and especially because the health care tax is relatively moderate compared to a person’s overall income. Sorry for the long post.

SOUTH DAKOTA v. DOLE, 483 U.S. 203 (1987)

CHIEF JUSTICE REHNQUIST delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner South Dakota permits persons 19 years of age or older to purchase beer containing up to 3.2% alcohol. In 1984 Congress enacted 23 U.S.C. 158, which directs the Secretary of Transportation to withhold a percentage of federal highway funds otherwise allocable from States “in which the purchase or public possession . . . of any alcoholic beverage by a person who is less than twenty-one years of age is lawful.” The State sued in United States District Court seeking a declaratory judgment that 158 violates the constitutional limitations on congressional exercise of the spending power and violates the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution. The District Court rejected the State’s claims, and the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed.

In this Court, the parties direct most of their efforts to defining the proper scope of the Twenty-first Amendment. Relying on our statement in California Retail Liquor Dealers Assn. v. Midcal Aluminum, Inc.(1980), that the “Twenty-first Amendment grants the States virtually complete control over whether to permit importation or sale of liquor and how to structure the liquor distribution system,” South Dakota asserts that the setting of minimum drinking ages is clearly within the “core powers” reserved to the States under 2 of the Amendment….Despite the extended treatment of the question by the parties, however, we need not decide in this case whether that Amendment would prohibit an attempt by Congress to legislate directly a national minimum drinking age. Here, Congress has acted indirectly under its spending power to encourage uniformity in the States’ drinking ages. As we explain below, we find this legislative effort within constitutional bounds even if Congress may not regulate drinking ages directly.

The Constitution empowers Congress to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Art. I, 8, cl. 1. Incident to this power, Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds, and has repeatedly employed the power “to further broad policy objectives by conditioning receipt of federal moneys upon compliance by the recipient with federal statutory and administrative directives.” The breadth of this power was made clear in United States v. Butler, 297 U.S. 1, 66 (1936), where the Court, resolving a longstanding debate over the scope of the Spending Clause, determined that “the power of Congress to authorize expenditure of public moneys for public purposes is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution.” Thus, objectives not thought to be within Article I’s “enumerated legislative fields,” may nevertheless be attained through the use of the spending power and the conditional grant of federal funds.

The spending power is of course not unlimited, but is instead subject to several general restrictions articulated in our cases. The first of these limitations is derived from the language of the Constitution itself: the exercise of the spending power must be in pursuit of “the general welfare.” Second, we have required that if Congress desires to condition the States’ receipt of federal funds, it “must do so unambiguously . . ., enabl[ing] the States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation.” Third, our cases have suggested that conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated “to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs.” Finally, we have noted that other constitutional provisions may provide an independent bar to the conditional grant of federal funds.

South Dakota does not seriously claim that 158 is inconsistent with any of the first three restrictions mentioned above. We can readily conclude that the provision is designed to serve the general welfare, especially in light of the fact that “the concept of welfare or the opposite is shaped by Congress . . . .” Congress found that the differing drinking ages in the States created particular incentives for young persons to combine their desire to drink with their ability to drive, and that this interstate problem required a national solution. The means it chose to address this dangerous situation were reasonably calculated to advance the general welfare. The conditions upon which States receive the funds, moreover, could not be more clearly stated by Congress. And the State itself, rather than challenging the germaneness of the condition to federal purposes, admits that it “has never contended that the congressional action was . . . unrelated to a national concern in the absence of the Twenty-first Amendment.” Indeed, the condition imposed by Congress is directly related to one of the main purposes for which highway funds are expended – safe interstate travel. This goal of the interstate highway system had been frustrated by varying drinking ages among the States. A Presidential commission appointed to study alcohol-related accidents and fatalities on the Nation’s highways concluded that the lack of uniformity in the States’ drinking ages created “an incentive to drink and drive” because “young persons commut[e] to border States where the drinking age is lower.” By enacting 158, Congress conditioned the receipt of federal funds in a way reasonably calculated to address this particular impediment to a purpose for which the funds are expended….

These cases establish that the “independent constitutional bar” limitation on the spending power is not, as petitioner suggests, a prohibition on the indirect achievement of objectives which Congress is not empowered to achieve directly. Instead, we think that the language in our earlier opinions stands for the unexceptionable proposition that the power may not be used to induce the States to engage in activities that would themselves be unconstitutional. Thus, for example, a grant of federal funds conditioned on invidiously discriminatory state action or the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment would be an illegitimate exercise of the Congress’ broad spending power. But no such claim can be or is made here. Were South Dakota to succumb to the blandishments offered by Congress and raise its drinking age to 21, the State’s action in so doing would not violate the constitutional rights of anyone.

Our decisions have recognized that in some circumstances the financial inducement offered by Congress might be so coercive as to pass the point at which “pressure turns into compulsion.” Here, however, Congress has directed only that a State desiring to establish a minimum drinking age lower than 21 lose a relatively small percentage of certain federal highway funds. Petitioner contends that the coercive nature of this program is evident from the degree of success it has achieved. We cannot conclude, however, that a conditional grant of federal money of this sort is unconstitutional simply by reason of its success in achieving the congressional objective.

When we consider, for a moment, that all South Dakota would lose if she adheres to her chosen course as to a suitable minimum drinking age is 5% of the funds otherwise obtainable under specified highway grant programs, the argument as to coercion is shown to be more rhetoric than fact.

Here Congress has offered relatively mild encouragement to the States to enact higher minimum drinking ages than they would otherwise choose. But the enactment of such laws remains the prerogative of the States not merely in theory but in fact. Even if Congress might lack the power to impose a national minimum drinking age directly, we conclude that encouragement to state action found in 158 is a valid use of the spending power. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

Jimbo3 on October 25, 2009 at 12:47 PM