Congress removed subsidies for federal exchanges in Obamacare before it passed

Leon Wolf:

Partisan hack and Washington Post writer Greg Sargent has allegedly found a silver bullet that proves that the Halbig decision is erroneous and that the Halbig plaintiffs don’t have a leg to stand on. The gist of Sargent’s point is that an earlier version of the Obamacare bill had language that explicitly provided for subsidies for beneficiaries on Federal exchanges, even though the final version of the bill did not include such language:

The first Senate version of the health law to be passed in 2009 — by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — explicitly stated that subsides would go to people on the federally-established exchange. A committee memo describing the bill circulated at the time spelled this out with total clarity.
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The disputed language ended up in the final bill because the two versions — both of which intended subsidies in all 50 states, albeit by varying structures — were merged.

Unfortunately for Greg Sargent, anyone who is either a lawyer or a reasonable person will tell you that his evidence proves the exact opposite of what he contends. Since Sargent is neither a lawyer nor a reasonable person, he concludes that this proves that Congressional Intent (insofar as it matters) was to provide subsidies for those on federal exchanges; everyone else understands that this proves the exact opposite.

This is not really a close call or a matter of reasonable dispute. Even for people who take legislative history as a thing that ought to be given great weight, the fact that Congress included a clause in an earlier version of the bill but then changed or removed it in the final version is considered to be conclusive evidence that Congress specifically desired the change in question, not that they intended the earlier version....
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This is what happens when you rush a huge bill through and don't take the time to read it and discuss it in committee.  I think Wolf argument makes more sense than Sargent's and the court precedents tend to agree.