The Hill – by Pete Kasperowicz
The House voted Friday to prevent the IRS from enforcing any aspect of ObamaCare, a bill meant to exact revenge against an agency that Republicans say is incapable of neutral enforcement of the law.
Members approved the Keep the IRS Off Your Health Care Act in a 232-185 vote. Four Democrats supported the bill along with every Republican.
The vote capped off several days of work in the House on bills aimed at reining in government regulation and government overreach.
House Democrats cast the votes as merely for show, given opposition from the White House and the Senate majority. The Obama administration threatened to veto the IRS enforcement bill and said it would undermine the 2010 healthcare law that is aimed at expanding healthcare coverage.
Some of these healthcare votes have created awkward moments for Democrats. Earlier this month, 22 Democrats voted with Republicans to delay the individual insurance mandate, and 35 voted to delay the employer mandate.
But Democrats mostly stuck together on Friday, as only four voted to pass the IRS bill: Reps. John Barrow (Ga.), Jim Matheson (Utah), Mike McIntyre (N.C.), and Collin Peterson (Minn.).
Friday’s vote was the 40th time the House has tried to fully or partially repeal ObamaCare. But it was also a chance to slam the IRS, which Republicans say has shown itself unworthy of neutrally enforcing the controversial law.
“The IRS is already out of control, abusing its power to tax and audit the activities of honest, hardworking Americans,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said. “The IRS has betrayed the trust of the American people.
“Democrats want to give this agency more power and authority?” he asked. “They want this agency involved in Americans’ healthcare? No way.”
Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) said the bill is a continuation of the GOP’s “blind obsession” with repealing the healthcare law. He also said Republicans are incorrectly arguing that the IRS will have access to people’s medical records.
“This should be said categorically: Neither the IRS nor the Department of Health and Human Services will have access to medical records or other personal history, no access whatsoever,” Levin said.
A few Democrats said gutting enforcement of the bill would remove health coverage that thousands of people now have under the law. Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) said the law would help families without coverage whose children are diagnosed with cancer.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) angrily rejected those statements as “scare tactics” that he said “do not have a place in legitimate debate on this floor.”
“Scare tactics to say that somehow Republicans … don’t care about people’s healthcare is just not true,” he said.
“We don’t believe in omnibus Washington-engineered healthcare,” he added. “That’s what’s going on here — Washington bureaucrats deciding what kind of healthcare you can have.”
Consideration of the bill reopened the battles that were waged three years ago when the bill was first passed under a Democratic majority. Now-Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) criticized the GOP for only focusing on repealing the law and for failing to engage in efforts to fix it.
“There’s no fix — no fix on the [GOP] website, no fix on this floor,” Hoyer said.
To that, freshman Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) shot back that Democrats didn’t seek GOP input back in 2010 when the law was written.
“It is interesting that the minority whip would like Republicans to help in fixing this bill, considering that they weren’t interested at all in Republican input when they passed it in the middle of the night, with a pure party-line vote,” he said.
Most Democrats said the House was wasting more time by passing a bill that was sure to go nowhere in the Senate. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who was recently honored as the longest-serving member of the House in U.S. history, offered his own historical take on the GOP bill.
“Aren’t you embarrassed to go a 40th time in a fruitless, hopeless act?” he asked. “The Republican Party is like the Bourbons of France: They forget nothing because they never learned anything.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/315267-house-votes-to-block-irs-enforcement-of-obamacare#ixzz2atvpOgu0
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Enforce what? There is no individual mandate!
Freedom not to participate
On September 7, 1916, Congress passed the Public Health Service Act, [Public Law 410] 58 Stat. 682(pertinent part reproduced below). The very title was designed to deceive, it had nothing to do with the public, and it was an *elective form of insurance. The reason no one is required to participate in the Health Care Act, as stated in section 1555, is simply the Act amends the Public Health Service Act, the original law was not repealed, so any amendment would also have to be voluntary.
Section 1001 (pertinent part reproduced below), clearly states the PPACA is an amendment to the Public Health Service Act, enacted in 1916 for canal and railroad workers in Panama, amended in 1934, see Canal Zone Code link at end.
The agency posed to enforce the Act, is the HHS, formerly the Public Health Service, their record of healthcare is recorded in the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment.
____________________________________________________________
One Hundred Eleventh Congress
of the
United States of America
AT THE SECOND SESSION
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday,
the fifth day of January, two thousand and ten
An Act
Entitled The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Public Law 111-148 ( available on line)
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS
Subtitle A—Immediate Improvements in Health Care Coverage for All Americans
*Sec. 1001. Amendments to the Public Health Service Act.
Sec. 1555. Freedom not to participate in Federal health insurance programs.
SEC. 1555 @42 U.S.C. 18115. FREEDOM NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN FEDERAL
HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAMS.
No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendments), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs.
____________________________________________________________________
Public Health Service Act (only enforceable in Panama, Panama Canal Code)
July 1, 1944 [H.R. 4624] | [Public Law 410] 58 Stat. 682
TITLE I—SHORT TITLE AND DEFINITIONS
SHORT TITLE
SEC. 1.
Titles I to V, inclusive, of the Act may be cited as the “Public Health Service Act”.
SEC. 605. (a) Section 7 of the Act of September 7, 1916, entitled “An Act to provide compensation for employees of the United States suffering injuries while in the performance of their duties, and for other purposes”, as amended *(U.S.C., 1940 edition, title 5, sec. *757), is amended by changing the period at the end thereof to a colon and adding the following: “Provided, That whenever any person is entitled to receive any benefits under this Act by reason of his injury, or by reason of the death of an employee, as defined in section 40, and is also entitled to receive from the United States any payments or benefits (other than the proceeds of any insurance policy), by reason of such injury or death under any other Act of Congress, because of service by him (or in the case of death, by the deceased) as an employee, as so defined, such person shall *elect which benefits he shall receive. Such election shall be made within one year after the injury or death, or such further time as the Commission may for good cause allow, and when made shall be irrevocable unless otherwise provided by law.”____________________________________________________________
The definition of the term “employee” for the purpose of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The precise definition of employee in the Public Health Service Act, (Title 5 U.S.C section 757), referred to in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, section 1001, is reproduce below.
“A man’s got to know his limitations”
.http://archive.org/stream/canalzonec…4pana_djvu.txt
CANAL ZONE CODE
AN ACT OF THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
OF AMERICA TO ESTABLISH A CODE OF LAWS
FOR THE CANAL ZONE, APPROVED JUNE 19, 1934
TOGETHER WITH AN APPENDIX CONTAINING CERTAIN TREATIES AND
GENERAL LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES APPLICABLE IN OR RELATING TO THE CANAL
ZONE OR THE PANAMA CANAL
-COMPENSATION FOR INJURIES TO CANAL AND RAILROAD EMPLOYEES
Canal Code note.
Note. — This section which required the President to provide a method for the
determination and adjustment of claims arising out of personal injuries to
employees occurring while directly engaged in actual work in connection with
the construction, maintenance, operation, or sanitation of the Canal or of the Panama Railroad, or of any auxiliary canals, locks, or other works necessary and convenient for the construction, maintenance, operation, or sanitation of the Canal, is omitted from the text of the Canal Zone Code as being covered by the Federal Employees Compensation Act (U.S. Code, title 5, secs. *751 to 793).