King Barack's "Cheap Shot" at SCOTUS (BMBYAB)

OBAMA’S “BULLY” PULPIT:  Obama took a cheap shot at the Supreme Court for even agreeing to hear the Obamacare subsidy case, King v. Burwell, telling reporters at a press conference in Germany “This should be an easy case” and “Frankly, it probably shouldn’t even have been taken up.” Joel Gehrke over at NRO notes:

Jonathan Gruber, one of Obamacare’s architects, famously contradicted that assertion in 2012, flatly admitting that the law had been designed to withhold subsidies from those who purchased coverage through the federal exchange in an attempt to prod states to set up their own marketplaces.
“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 — but your citizens still pay the taxes that support this bill,” Gruber said. Yet when asked today to say how states should prepare for the prospect of the court adopting that reading, Obama was dismissive of his opponents legal reasoning, and the idea that any well-informed jurist could be swayed by it. “I think it’s important for us to go ahead and assume that the Supreme Court is going to do what most legal scholars who have looked at this would expect them to do,” he said. “I’m optimistic that the Supreme Court will play it straight when it comes to the interpretation.”

It’s typical Obama bullying of the Court, suggesting that it would not be “play[ing] it straight” if it rules in favor of the plaintiffs and gives effect to the plain language of a law that limits subsidies to “an Exchange established by the State.” Obama similarly took to his “bully” pulpit after the Supreme Court’s oral arguments in the first big Obamacare case, NFIB v. Sebelius (2012). It’s almost like he thinks the Supreme Court is the King’s Bench or something.

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Posted at 12:49 pm by Elizabeth Price Fole