In response to the devastating ruling striking down Obamacare subsidies in states which opted out of exchanges, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said, "You don't need a fancy legal degree to understand that Congress intended for every eligible American to have access to tax credits that would lower their healthcare costs, regardless of whether it was state officials or federal officials who were running the marketplace."
Has Mr. Earnest been reading Robert Bork or Antonin Scalia in his free time? Dude sounds like a Born Again Originalist.
Imagine if Mr. Earnest or his boss used the "You don't need a fancy legal degree to understand the intent of Congress" rule to other controversial subjects of our time?
I'm pretty sure you don't need a "fancy legal degree" to understand that the "right to keep and bear arms" means that Americans have the right to keep and bear arms.
There's even something more revealing in the carefully constructed statement Earnest read (making sure to get it exactly right) and that's the bottom-line basis for most progressive legislation that emerged from the 2008-2010 session when Pelosi-Reid-Obama ran rough-shod across the nation. All that mattered was their beautiful intentions, not our rights, not the expanding role of an ever-intrusive government, not regular order, not the protestations of tens of thousands of patriots on the national mall.
Their intentions were perfect, so they deserve to be congratulated and their laws deserve to stand.
Just look at how we got here from there and you'll understand the arrogant beauty in Earnest's statement.
After ramming Obamacare down our throats with unprecedented partisan maneuvers in Congress, the law barely survived a SCOTUS challenge in the midst of a presidential election. One of the major blows to the healthcare law that fateful summer day in 2012 was that the Medicaid expansion was deemed unconstitutional and states were allowed the option of opting out of the mandate.
Many did, but Obama and his bureaucrats at HHS went forward modifying the law unilaterally to allow states that did not expand Medicaid for their own exchanges could still participate in the enormous subsidies that Obamacare provided.
In other words: "To hell with the law as Congress wrote it and to hell with the SCOTUS decision, we're going forward with this law on our own because WE KNOW WHAT'S RIGHT."
And that's really what Earnest means when he waxes poetic about Congress' intentions. It's all that matters. The law (and your rights) be damned. We know what's best and our hearts are in the right place.
And the beat goes on...