Sarah Hurtubise of The Daily Caller probes recent comments from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy that might signal his stance in the King v. Burwell case involving Obamacare subsidies.

In a Monday budget request before the House Appropriations Committee, Justice Anthony Kennedy, typically the swing vote on the Court, made comments that could suggest he’s leaning in favor of the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell. The question in the pivotal case is whether the text of Obamacare restricts the law’s popular premium subsidies to state-run exchanges, of which there are only 14, and bans them from the vast majority of states that use the federally-run exchange, HealthCare.gov.

The battle over the lawsuit about Obamacare subsidies currently before the Supreme Court has focused on whether anyone’s got a solution if the Court’s decision ends up skyrocketing HealthCare.gov premiums.

The administration is arguing that the language in the bill doesn’t exclude federal marketplace customers from the subsidies and seems to be trying to convince the Court that ruling otherwise would be catastrophic for the health-care law, and therefore for the Court’s image. …

… But it may turn out that the Court may choose to not consider the likelihood of Congress restoring the subsidies at all. While he wasn’t overtly discussing King v. Burwell, Kennedy’s comments on Monday certainly suggested that it isn’t the Court’s role to predict what a certain Congress would do in response to their cases.

“We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes and we say, ‘Well, if this is wrong, the Congress will fix it.’ But then we hear that Congress can’t pass a bill one way or the other. That there is gridlock. Some people say that should affect the way we interpret the statutes,” Kennedy said Monday. ”That seems to me a wrong proposition. We have to assume that we have three fully functioning branches of the government, government that are committed to proceed in good faith and with good will toward one another to resolve the problems of this republic.”