Wednesday, October 13, 2010

New Healthcare

The 8 October 2010 article speaks about the new healthcare environment resulting from the new federal regulations.

2 comments:

Michele said...

I'm commenting on your article of October 12, 2011. Your "logical" assumption that liberals think that their money belongs to the government is ridiculous and insulting to liberals. I'm a liberal, have many liberal friends and acquaintances, and have never heard any such statements. I don't know who your "colleague" is, but he is certainly not representative of the liberal view.

Jason Legg said...

Michele,

Perhaps, the column was inartfully drafted as it was not my intent to suggest that liberals thought their money belonged to the government. The question is the view of dollars owed for taxes is the government's money even before it is paid to the government. I never meant to suggest that anyone believes that a person's entire paycheck belongs to the government. If I suggested something more broad, it was not my intention.

Justice Kagan's dissent (joined by three justices from the "liberal" wing) suggested that the government's decision to allow you to keep some of your tax dollars did not change the government nature of the expenditure, i.e., the government was still underwriting, albeit indirectly, religious activity in violation of the Establishment Clause. The logical extension of this argument is that it is not private money (which implicates no Establishment Clause issue), but government money (which plainly implicates the Establishment Clause).

The majority plainly stated that the tax credit was neutral - so the individual decision on how to use the money they kept in their pocket did not implicate the Establishment Clause. The dissent suggested that the government was still involved because it allowed the taxpayer to keep money that should have gone to the government, but went to a religious purposes instead.

The dissents position is not that far removed from my friend's position regarding tax dollars. If you get a chance, take a look at Kagan's dissent as she did a nice job in articulating the position that my friend advocated all those many years ago.

In any event, I appreciate the fact that you not only read the column, but took the chance to comment on it. If you ever have any questions, concerns or comments, please do not hestitate to drop a comment or an email.

Thanks again,

Jason