We know the intent of the Congress, now we'll find out the intent of the Court
by digby
The New York Times' Robert Pear went out and interviewed a bunch of people and found out that what has long been obvious to anyone with half a brain was true: the Obamacare suit before the Supreme Court is based on what amounts to a typo:
They are only four words in a 900-page law: “established by the state.”
But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court.
How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery. Who wrote them, and why? Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges?
The answer, from interviews with more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law, is that the words were a product of shifting politics and a sloppy merging of different versions. Some described the words as “inadvertent,” “inartful” or “a drafting error.” But none supported the contention of the plaintiffs.
He even got Republicans Olympia Snowe and one of Mike Enzi's legal advisors on the record agreeing. Not that I think it will matter all that much. If the conservative majority wants to overturn Obamacare it will find a way to justify doing it, the easiest being to simply rule for the plaintiffs while saying that all the congress has to do if "fix it". (It's not the Court's problem if the people don't want to fix Obamacare ...)
But who knows? This one's a nail biter.
.