South Carolina Outperrys Perry

Rick Perry must be gnashing his teeth and kicking wastebaskets today as he has been

They Passed What?

officially “outperried” by South Carolina’s state legislature and its governor, Nikki Haley.

 

When Rick Perry was asked how Texas was going to implement the Affordable Healthcare Act, famously known as Obamacare, he punted and told the feds that they could go on ahead and draw up the plans. All of us future Obamacare clients cheered because this told us that we were going to get a deal where Rick Perry and his cronies don’t get rich.

But today the state legislature of 1^st to secede South Carolina has fired another shot at Fort Sumpter by passing the oddly named “South Carolina Freedom of Health Care Protection Act.”

Isn’t that an odd name? Isn’t it more like a Freedom From Health Care Protection Act? And who in H-E-double-hockey-sticks can be in favor of that? I’m so free. I don’t have a lick of health care protection to my name.

This is something that could be so Rick Perry. Rick Perry was all about secession awhile back. This South Carolina act is all about secession through what is called nullification. Nullification is so unconstitutional they didn’t even have to write an amendment to the Constitution to make it so. But this state thinks that it is wiser than the Supreme Court of the United States, which upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Healthcare Act, as the act declares Obamacare unconstitutional and their act allows them to ignore Obamacare because it is unconstitutional.

Not their job. Leave that one to the Supremes.

And I really like one of the provisions in the act, the one having to do with the penalty you pay for not participating in a healthcare plan. When you pay your federal income tax next year you have to document that you have health insurance or pay a penalty to the federal government through the tax code. South Carolina’s act allows South Carolinians to deduct that penalty from their state income taxes.

That’s pretty funny. The penalty runs in the hundreds and up to a couple of thousand dollars. Where will that state get any revenue if everyone gets to deduct their penalty?

Wait, I just figured out why Rick Perry is even more frustrated by this act. Texas has no state income tax so this brilliant deduction idea wouldn’t even be possible in Texas.