California Legislature—2013–14 Regular Session

Assembly Joint Resolution No. 23

Introduced by Assembly Members Logue and Morrell

(Coauthors: Assembly Members Achadjian, Dahle, Beth Gaines, Grove, Harkey, Jones, Olsen, Patterson, Wagner, Waldron, and Wilk)

May 31, 2013

Assembly Joint Resolution No. 23—Relative to health care.

LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL’S DIGEST

AJR 23, as introduced, Logue. Federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: requirement to purchase health insurance.

This measure would urge the President to remove any financial oversight responsibilities of the Internal Revenue Service with regard to the administration of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and instead have those duties transferred to a separate board, created by and accountable to Congress.

Fiscal committee: no.

WHEREAS, On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the
federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which
requires most United States citizens and legal residents to have
health insurance, specifies a minimum benefit design for insurance
coverage, creates state-based American Health Benefit Exchanges
through which individuals can purchase coverage with premium
and cost-sharing credits, requires employers to pay penalties for
employees who receive tax credits for health insurance through
an Exchange, imposes new regulations on health plans in the
Exchanges and in the individual and small group markets, permits
states to expand Medicaid, and provides the Internal Revenue
Service (IRS) with numerous new responsibilities; and

WHEREAS, The ACA gives the IRS the unprecedented power
to force individual citizens and employers with 50 or more
employees to either purchase a health insurance plan designed by
Washington D.C. politicians, bureaucrats, and lobbyists or pay
thousands of dollars in fines; and

WHEREAS, In implementing the ACA, the federal government
has unleashed the IRS to hunt down and fine otherwise law-abiding
individuals and employers; and

WHEREAS, The IRS has requested funding for 1,954 new
agents and the creation of the largest personal information database
the federal government has ever attempted, the Federal Data
Service Hub, in order to decide who is complying with the law,
who will be fined, who will receive hundreds of billions of dollars
in tax credits, and how much each health insurer will pay as a part
of a new annual $8 billion tax; and

WHEREAS, Employers must begin recording the aggregate
cost of employer-sponsored medical coverage on every employee’s
IRS Form W-2; and

WHEREAS, The IRS, in order to implement the ACA, will
receive information from insurers and taxpayers to prove whether
each citizen purchased an insurance policy this year, whether the
specific insurance policy meets specific government requirements,
whether the citizen is “a member of a recognized religious sect”
and therefore exempt from the individual mandate, and whether
the citizen and members of his or her family are working full-time
or part-time; and

WHEREAS, Because provisions of the employer mandate mean
that an employer can be fined by the IRS in certain circumstances
if the employer’s employee qualifies for a subsidy from an
exchange due to changes in the employee’s personal circumstances,
such as a spouse’s lost coverage or a divorce, employers seeking
to avoid the IRS fine will be forced to demand detailed household
income information from their employees, which would result in
an unnecessary loss of an employee’s and his or her family’s
privacy; and

WHEREAS, In early 2012, the Inspector General for Tax
Administration began an audit that files using acceptable
government accounting standards to review case files; and

WHEREAS, The Inspector General for Tax Administration
reported that in 2010, the IRS “developed and used criteria to
identify potential political cases for review that inappropriately
identified specific groups applying for tax-exempt status based on
their names and policy positions…”; and

WHEREAS, The Inspector General’s report found that the IRS
developed and began using criteria to review specific groups
applying for tax-exempt status based on their names or policy
positions instead of developing nonbiased criteria based on the tax
laws and Treasury Regulations; and

WHEREAS, According to the Inspector General’s report, on
January 15, 2012, the Internal Revenue Service decided to target
“political action type organizations involved in limiting or
expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill of
Rights, and social economic reform movement”; and

WHEREAS, Lois G. Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service
official who oversaw tax-exempt groups, first revealed publicly
on May 10, 2013, that IRS personnel had targeted the groups; and

WHEREAS, Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS official who ran the
scandal-ridden tax-exempt organizations division between
2009-2012 now runs the agency’s Affordable Care Act office;
and

WHEREAS, It is inappropriate and unacceptable for one of the
most powerful government agencies to target various groups for
political purposes; now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Assembly and the Senate of the State of
California, jointly, That the Legislature calls on President of the
United States and the United States Congress, as a first step, to
remove any financial oversight responsibilities of the IRS with
regard to the administration of the ACA; and be it further

Resolved, That the administrative responsibilities of the IRS
with regard to the ACA be transferred to a separate board, created
by and accountable to Congress; and be it further

Resolved, That this board, in accordance with the law and the
of the people, will determine the mechanism for enforcement of
the ACA; and be it further

Resolved, That the Chief Clerk of the Assembly transmit copies
of this resolution to the author for appropriate distribution, to the
President and Vice President of the United States, to the Speaker
of the House of Representatives, to the Majority Leader of the
Senate, and to each Senator and Representative from California
in the Congress of the United States.