By Mark Rhoads -
Illinois is one of about eight states that gives to the governor the power of an amendatory veto which means that the governor is able to reject a bill of the legislature but return it with conditional approval provided that the legislature accepts new substantive changes written by the governor. The power is mischievious because it can be subject to abuse of course but both houses still have the right to agree or disagree with any new language the governor might propose so neither their language or his will become law.
The amendatory veto power was sold at the 1970 Constitutional Convention as a tool to help a governor make technical corrections to a bill overlooked by the legislature and it has been legitimatelyy used in that way at times. But the very bad part of this power is that it makes the governor in effect a member of the legislative branch without any requirement that he or she hold public hearings on proposed changes in language.
Today Chief Justice John Roberts claimed he found the individual manate of the Health Care bill to be unconstitutional under the commerce cluse but in effect he "corrected" the bill by calling it a legitimate use of taxing power even though the word "tax" never appeared in the bill but only in oral arguments by the Solicitor General defending the mandate. Is Roberts in effect "amending" and act of Congress rather than just ruling on the constitutionality of a bill?
The problem with the Roberts ruling is that even if the administration says the fine for a failure to purchase helth insurance is a tax, then it is a tax that would violate equal protection of the laws because it only falls on one category of taxpayer who is being punished for a failure to make a purchase of a product that Roberts also claims at the same time Congress has no constitutional authority to impose in the first place.
It is very surprising that Justice Kennedy, normally the swing vote, argues forcefully in dissent along with Scalia, Alito, and Thomas that the entire law for reason of the Medicaid mandate on the states and the individual mandate violated the Constitution while Chief Justice Roberts sided with the four liberal justices but that is not by itself the reason to question the intellectual honesty of Roberts.
The reason is the illogic of the Roberts opinion that it is OK to punish only one class of taxpayers for their behavior or non-behavior in failing to purchase a product mandated by the federal government. The argument that states mandate automobile liability insurance is bogus because states do not impose such a mandate on people who do not own or drive cars just because they live and breathe in a state but the Obamacare law imposes a mandate to purchase on all citizens if they ever see a doctor or not let alone become a burden on government.
What could be the political fallout? If there is any silver lining, it might be that now that the Supreme Court majority has declared the mandate to be a tax which the Obama Administration never admitted before until the Solicitor General came up with his argument geared to the justices, then Republicans in Congress should mandate a vote in the House to repeal the tax and force Democrats again to go on the record as voting for a new tax which they avoided doing in 2009 when they claimed the mandate was not a tax. That would be one way to force a tangible record vote before November in at least one chamber.
