Changing Stance, Administration Defends Insurance Mandate
Posted: Sun Jul 18, 2010 4:16 pm
From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/healt ... ealth.html
As of yet, I have not been able to find the source of the quote about using taxing power to exceed Constitutional limits to federal power in order to read it in context.
To me, being able to tax even that which could not be regulated does not equate to “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution.Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: July 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — When Congress required most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, Democrats denied that they were creating a new tax. But in court, the Obama administration and its allies now defend the requirement as an exercise of the government’s “power to lay and collect taxes.”
And that power, they say, is even more sweeping than the federal power to regulate interstate commerce.
...
Congress can use its taxing power “even for purposes that would exceed its powers under other provisions” of the Constitution, the department said. For more than a century, it added, the Supreme Court has held that Congress can tax activities that it could not reach by using its power to regulate commerce.
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As of yet, I have not been able to find the source of the quote about using taxing power to exceed Constitutional limits to federal power in order to read it in context.