While certainly the Supreme Court ruling today was a victory for the Obama administration and supporters of the Affordable Care Act, conservatives need not eat crow and the left should not be saying “I told you so”.
There are a couple of reasons for this. One has to do with some of the hidden or largely ignored inner aspects of the ruling, and I will be discussing that in depth in a post tomorrow.
But the second reason is far more plain, when it comes to the debate of the past months over the individual mandate and the ACA, the conservative side won.
The debate was always centered on the application of the mandate as an exercise of the powers of the Commerce Clause.
Liberals largely adopted the view that the mandate was a valid application of the clause while conservatives at least expressed doubt as to the application, with many taking the view that there was no power under the Commerce Clause for the government to force someone into the marketplace (IE make them buy health insurance).
To paraphrase Mona Lisa Vito….. The Government (and those who argue for the mandate under the Commerce Clause) is (or are) WRONG.
The majority opinion held the mandate valid under the Tax and Spending power of Congress, not as an exercise of the powers of the Commerce Clause.
Few ever disputed the idea that Congress has the power to Tax and Spend and many argued that had the Congress passed the ACA with a clear taxing provision that the whole debate never would have happened.
So while there is plenty to debate on this topic, both legal and political, the “I told ya so” argument is not one that should be exercised.
And as I will discuss in my posting tomorrow, we may find that this isn’t as clear cut a win for either side of the legal debate.