Gohmert: Justices have sold their souls

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Thursday that the Supreme Court had made a shameful decision to uphold ObamaCare’s subsidies in a ruling issued earlier that day.

“The Supreme Court has a lot to be embarrassed about,” Gohmert said on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show.”

“As a former judge and chief justice, I am extremely embarrassed for them,” he said.

“And unfortunately, when you’ve sold your soul, it’s kind of tough to even realize you should be embarrassed, but they should.”

{mosads}Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 decision released Thursday morning that ensures consumers purchasing health insurance through the federal exchange in roughly 34 states can continue doing so.

Gohmert argued that this interpretation is a mistaken reading of President Obama’s signature healthcare legislation. He said that it had explicitly stated that states that did not create their own exchanges were ineligible for federal subsidies.

“They intended these words,” Gohmert said of ObamaCare’s authors. “You’re not going to get one dime of subsidy unless you set up a state exchange.”

“They meant if the law is unequivocal and then they realized, ‘wow, most of these states don’t get along with it, they don’t agree with this, so wow, we better change the law,’ ” he added.

Gohmert argued that Americans need new leadership before ObamaCare can be struck from the books.

“Hopefully if we either get new leadership or all of a sudden our current leadership grows some leadership ability, then we can start dismantling this thing until it’s gone,” he said of the healthcare law.

Roberts argued in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday morning that eliminating federal subsidies could pull state markets into a death spiral.

This chain of events, he argued, is not what Congress intended when passing the law.

“The argument that the phrase ‘established by the State’ would be superfluous if Congress meant to extend tax credits to both State and Federal exchanges is unpersuasive,” he wrote.

“Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them,” he added.

Justice Antonin Scalia led opposition to the majority decision with a scathing dissent.

“We should start calling the law SCOTUScare,” he quipped, referencing the Supreme Court’s earlier ruling upholding ObamaCare’s mandate that people buy health insurance.

The justices’ second ruling, he added, constitutes “somersaults of statutory interpretation.”