The Federalist's Domenech: Republicans 'Dodged A Bullet' With Obamacare Ruling
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Ben Domenech, publisher at The Federalist and Senior Fellow at The Heartland Institute, spoke with Talk Radio 1210 WPHT morning host Chris Stigall about the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare, saying that Justice John Roberts "bent over backward" to save Obamacare and "avoid a real plain text reading of what the law actually said."
"It's funny, because in his initial decision on Obamacare, John Roberts wrote that the job of the court is not to save people from the consequences of their decisions, and it seems to me that he left off 'unless that is the President.' The fact that this law was written the way that it was is something that lead to this sort of situation in which you have the kind of textual problem that existed."
While many Republicans and conservatives have publicly lambasted the Supreme Court for the ruling, Domenech feels that they actually "dodged a bullet" by ruling the way they did, as opposed to in favor of those who want to repeal it.
"Essentially, the Congress would be put in a position where they had to decide whether to deny millions of Americans subsidies under the law, a pretty short order, and perhaps throw the insurance markets into chaos -- in the short term at least. That's not the sort of thing that you want to do leading up to a critical election. So, the members of Congress, particularly Republican leadership, were already giving off signals that they were interested in kicking the can or extending these subsidies for the next year and a half. Which would have, from my perspective, depressed a lot of the conservative base, it would have put their fingerprints on Obamacare in a significant way, and it would have enhanced the likelihood that this would be a difficult charge to level against Hillary Clinton as a mono-partisan policy as it currently stands."
He concludes that if it had gone the other way, he suspects "Republican leadership would have caved and caved rapidly and gotten very little out of this, as they have in most situations where they are negotiating with the President."