IN BRIEF

Justices Allow the Term ‘Tax’ to Embrace ‘Penalty’

JUNE 29, 2012

“When the establishment of Social Security was challenged after it was enacted in 1935, Mr. Glass said that ‘the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that the new Social Security program, based on the government’s broad power to tax, was fully constitutional.’

In that case, however, the government had based its justification for the law on the power to tax, while President Obama and Congressional Democrats specifically denied that they were raising taxes through the penalty for not buying health insurance.

But then, as now, it was a Supreme Court justice who came up with the justification for the program. . . .” (New York Times) 

The Supreme Court is the part of the government that rationalizes whatever the other parts are doing. Roberts even quoted Oliver Wendell Holmes to that effect.

FEE Timely Classic

“Unrestrained Appetites, Unlimited Government” by Jeffrey R. Snyder