Obamacare: Will the Supreme Court delay its decision until 2016?

  When the Obama regime decided not to appeal the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the individual mandate in Obamacare was unconstitutional and requested that the Supreme Court take up the case before the 2012 election many  people wondered what Barack Obama was up to. After all, why would Barack Obama fast track the Supreme Court hearing when he could have delayed it until after the 2012 election? Why did he chose to allow the Supreme Court to hear Obamacare arguments before the election, thusly turning this into a campaign issue?

  We just might now know the answer to these questions. Any American who does not comply with the healthcare mandate will have to pay a fine to the federal government for their non-compliance with the law. In an effort to keep his promise to the American people, Barack Obama claimed that this “fee” was not a “tax” therefore he was not imposing a tax on people who earn under $250,000 and elect not to have healthcare coverage.

  But a funny thing happened on the way to the Supreme Court; the Obama regime’s defense of the healthcare mandate in the courts has been that this fine is indeed a tax and therefore it is constitutional because the Congress has the right to levy taxes on the American people. And this might be the reason why the Obama regime decided to fast track the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare.

  If the Supreme Court rules that the healthcare mandate is indeed a tax it may be required under law to delay a ruling on Obamacare until 2016, here are the details:

First enacted in 1867, the Tax Anti-Injunction Act sweepingly forbids any court from hearing any case in which any person attempts to prevent the assessment or collection of a tax. Once the tax has been assessed and collected, however, a court may hear a case on it.

The ObamaCare mandate is enforced by means of a penalty fine, collected by the IRS. With a few exceptions, this fine will be imposed on every citizen who doesn’t check a box on his tax return affirming that he has purchased government-controlled health insurance. 

Is the IRS penalty a tax, or not? So far, lower federal courts have come down on both sides of this issue. And for complicated legal reasons, the Obama Administration has actually been taking boths sides on it: in Congress, the President’s men say it’s not a tax; in court, they say it is.

If the high Court decides the mandate is a tax, it will be a dream come true for the Administration:

• President Obama faces reelection in November 2012.
• ObamaCare doesn’t go into full operation until January 2014.
• The first time the IRS can levy the mandate penalty/tax won’t be until folks file their tax returns, in mid-April 2015. 
• The slow judicial process will likely delay a final Supreme Court ruling until mid-2016. 

  This is certainly a potential turn of events that I didn’t see coming, and it is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. I always thought Barack Obama may have had something up his sleeve when he made this decision and now we might just know what it was.