Senate Finance Committee members miraculously survive near-death experience, describe encounters with Truth

Ernie, via JimmyFungus.

Brilliant New York Times reporter Robert Pear has learned that some of the authors of the Affordable Care Act are still alive, so that it should be possible to ask them about the King v. Burwell theory—that health insurance subsidies should not be available in states that failed to create their own exchanges because Congress intended that a federal exchange should exist but should not work.

So he went and asked them—former senators Olympia Snowe and Jeff Bingaman, specifically, and some of the Senate Finance Committee lawyers and other staffers from way back in 2009-10. Waiting carefully, of course, until after the Supreme Court justices had made up their minds on the case, and in all probability written their opinion, because it would be so un-American if a Supreme Court decision were in danger of being influenced by some, you know, facts, as opposed to the opinions former consultant Jonathan Gruber suggested he might have held in January 2012 although he has since said he was mistaken.

And lo and behold, it turns out the authors of the Act did intend that the federal exchange working was the idea.

Not that it would necessarily have influenced what the Court thought. They don't want to know what James Madison thought about the subject matter of the Second Amendment.

Now I have to go read what Lemieux said. [Update: he didn't say the same thing. Whew!]