Mar. 23, 2014, The Wall Street Journal
A defining feature of President Obama's second term is his
willfulness in defying limits on executive power to suit his political goals,
and no more so than with the Affordable Care Act. The judiciary is the last
check on those abuses, and this week it will have another opportunity to
vindicate the rule of law.
On
Tuesday the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear one of the more important
legal challenges to ObamaCare's lawless implementation. Unlike the challenge to
the individual insurance mandate, Halbig v. Sebelius involves no great
questions of constitutional interpretation. The plaintiffs are merely asking
the judges to tell the Administration to faithfully execute the plain language
of the statute that Congress passed and President Obama signed.
The Affordable Care Act—at least the version that passed in
2010—instructed the states to establish insurance exchanges, and if they didn't
the Health and Human Services Department was authorized to build federal
exchanges. The law says that subsidies will be available only to people who
enroll "through an Exchange established by the State." The question
in Halbig is whether these taxpayer subsidies can be distributed through
the federal exchanges, as the Administration insists.
Prior
to passage, Democrats were divided over the structure of the exchanges, with
liberals favoring a national clearinghouse and moderates state control. The
federalists won and conditioned the subsidies on state-based exchanges.
This
was no accident. The federal government cannot commandeer the sovereign states
under the Constitution, so Democrats created an incentive for Governors to
participate voluntarily.
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