Procedurally How The ACA Originated UN-Constitutionally In The Senate
(Above Screenshot Taken From: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.3590:)
The House began work on a health care bill titled the "Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962)" but it was clear to Democrats it would fall far short of the progressive vision for health care reform. Senate Democrats believed they had more 'flexibility' to structure a health care reform bill along the lines of Obama's/progressives' vision for the reform but constitutionally(!) tax/spending-related bills can't begin there. So with an act of outrageous subterfuge Democrats found a way to originate it in the Senate after all.
The House had sent H.R. 3590 to the Senate. That was a bill regarding home ownership tax breaks for service members which had nothing whatsoever to do with health care. It was a tax/spending-related bill and therefore had originated in the House according to the constitution's requirements. Calling what they were doing an "amendment" Senate Democrats took that bill, totally(!) gutted the language in it, replaced ALL of its contents with the text of ObamaCare and changed the title to "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act". The only thing the bill kept was the bill's number, "H.R. 3590" which designated it as a House-originated bill. It's ridiculous to call a modification of such scope an amendment! Bottom line: the Democrat-controlled Senate hijacked a House bill solely(!) to use its number designation, totally ignoring the intent of the separation of powers features in the constitution regarding taxation/spending legislation. H.R. 3590 received 100% of the House Republicans' votes as a veterans home ownership tax bill but when it came back as the ACA it received 0% of their votes.
A second Democrat subterfuge was using reconciliation to move the ACA legislation quickly through congress. Reconciliation is used mainly in the Senate to limit debate on a budget bill to 20 hours, thus eliminating effective use of debate or filibuster by the minority (ie, Republican) opposition. Of course the ACA is not your standard 'budget' bill but that didn't stop them from using reconciliation anyway. This was one of the largest and most impacting bills in our history. And it was enormously complex. Therefore, the responsible thing for congress to do was thoroughly debate it ... as long as necessary to fix things needing to be fixed before it was sent to the president. Is it any wonder that its implementation is causing so much confusion, implementation difficulties and 'unintended consequences'? And there can be little doubt the worst is yet to come.
The third subterfuge was relatively minor compared with the other two, especially the first one above. Even though they controlled the House, Democrats didn't have enough votes to pass the ACA as received from the Senate. So to garner sufficient Democrat support, they convinced President Obama to issue Executive Order 13535 which affirmed the Hyde Amendment's superiority over abortion funding language that might be specified in or construed from the language of the ACA. An executive order may be used to clarify a bill's language in order to facilitate its faithful implementation by the executive branch but may not be used to override a bill's language in this way. Of course that didn't stop them from doing it anyway. (Note: This is a fairly minor subterfuge. To the extent you think this criticism is minor or even irrelevant, it's a secondary issue to the huge one of originating tax/revenue legislation in the Senate which is sufficient to declare the ACA unconstitutional.)
To Democrats, the end justifies the means and they most certainly saw it that way regarding the ACA. Their actions represented irresponsibility in the extreme and was a gross violation of their oath of office. Violating the intent if not the letter of the constitution is no big deal to them when they want something badly enough. So much for integrity or for responsibility TO the constitution which they all swear to preserve, protect and uphold.
To verify what I've said, refer to Wikipedia's explanation of the ACA where I obtained most of this information.
Text of H.R. 3590 as originated in the House:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr3590pcs/pdf/BILLS-111hr3590pcs.pdf
Text of H.R. 3590 as amended into the ACA by the Senate and returned to the House:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-111hr3590as/pdf/BILLS-111hr3590as.pdf
