President Obama is facing a flurry of accusations that he's bullying the U.S. Supreme Court just as it considers whether his signature Obamacare law actually means what it says.
The issue it whether the law's subsidies can be obtained through the federal exchange in states that have not set up an exchange of their own.
The law states the subsidies are available through exchanges "established by the state," but the IRS decided that also meant the federal exchange, which was set up when many states opted out.
It was on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany this week, Fox News reported, that Obama was "complaining that the court should never have taken up the case."
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"This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up," Obama said.
The president said it's safe to "assume" the court will do what most legal scholars expect and "play it straight," Fox News said.
Obama claimed it has been well-documented that Congress never intended to exclude people who got their insurance through the federal exchange.
But Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice told Bill Hemmer in a Fox News interview: "I think this is almost like a bullying technique. The president here is upset because the Supreme Court took it. Well, there was a conflict in the circuits and when the circuits are in conflict with each other the Supreme Court resolves the conflict."
Sekulow said the president "keeps saying, well, it's just four words," "established by the state."
But it's four words, he said, "that carry billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars of subsidies with them and it affects the way his law's being implemented, and IRS – this is the part that everybody forgets – the IRS was the one who changed this rule.
"It's like a political campaign against the Supreme Court here. … This president has shown a pretty consistent disregard for the Supreme Court when he doesn't like their opinion," Sekulow said.
"I think here's what he's doing. He's trying to say if the Supreme Court upholds the law as it's actually written ... then you the America people blame the Supreme Court. The correct response is maybe someone should have read this law before they passed it."
See the Sekulow interview:
One of the problems for Obama is that the self-confessed architect of the Obamacare law, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, repeatedly has stated that the law was written specifically to exclude benefits for people living in states that do not have their own exchanges.
Gruber also was the Obamacare adviser who famously said the law was passed thanks to the "stupidity of the American voter."
He's argued that the intent was to force states to set up exchanges by punishing citizens if they didn't.
"I think what's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange that means your citizens don't get their tax credits," Gruber said.
"But your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill. So you're essentially saying to your citizens, you're going to pay all the taxes to help all the other states in the country. I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges and that they'll do it, but you know once again the politics can get ugly around this," he said.
See Gruber:
Sekulow was not alone in his opinion of Obama. At White House Dossier, Keith Koffler posted a story with the headline, "White House Begins to Bully the Supreme Court Again."
He noted Obama had made similarly intimidating statements in a previous Obamacare case before the Supreme Court. And he noted there were reports Chief Justice John Roberts "did change his opinion, allowing the law to survive by a 5-4 majority."
At the MegynKelly.org blog, an unofficial site for fans of the Fox News host, was the statement: "You'd think he might have learned some humility … Not a chance. Yesterday, during a press conference at the G7, he [Obama] was asked about the latest challenge to the affordable Care Act."
The commentary noted that Obama said Republicans who worked on the legislation intended the subsidies for all comers.
"It's unclear which Republicans he was referring to since the law in its final form received zero Republican input and as many votes," the commentary said.
At Reason, Damon Root said, "President Obama once again used his bully pulpit to lecture the court about a pending Obamacare case."
He noted while the case could be decided either way, "it's also worth bearing in mind that his president's legal judgment is far from infallible."
He noted the long string of recent "embarrassing losses" at the Supreme Court for the Obama administration.
The Fox News Channel's Judge Andrew Napolitano said, ultimately, Obama's bullying won't have an impact.
"He cannot intimidate them. They have lifetime tenure. … They have, more likely than not, already voted on this, and they know which way it's going to go. They couldn't care less what he says."