Liberals have long viewed the Constitution as a quaint anachronism to be overcome. Now that they’re in power in Washington, they’re trying to do an end run around it.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, says the left-wing Big Government crowd in Washington doesn’t recognize the limitations on the government’s powers that are provided for in the Constitution.
They view this as a grant of the ability of the government to act not as government but rather as king and that’s not the way our constitutional republic is set up. The way it works in the United States is it’s a limited federal government. That’s what the Constitution outlines, very clearly. And this idea that the federal government can come in and mandate acquisition of insurance or frankly this entire program violates a number of constitutional provisions, but, judge, it points to something else…[ObamaCare supporters in Congress] don’t care what the Constitution says in this regard. What they think is they’re the government and they know best.
When pressed, ObamaCare supporters on Capitol Hill can’t explain what part of the Constitution of the United States of America authorizes the federal government to force Americans to buy health insurance.
Glenn Beck’s substitute host Judge Andrew Napolitano played an audio recording of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ridiculing the questioner. When asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” she replied, “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
A requirement to purchase health insurance is plainly unconstitutional.
Legal thinkers David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey have also argued that “The Constitution assigns only limited, enumerated powers to Congress and none, including the power to regulate interstate commerce or to impose taxes, would support a federal mandate requiring anyone who is otherwise without health insurance to buy it.”
Such a requirement, which would give the IRS the power to go after people who refuse to purchase insurance, is also massively unpopular among the American people. Lawmakers know this. That’s one of the reasons they’ve been insisting on huge home state bribes in order to vote for it. They hope that the pork and special legislative favors they bring home to their states will help the public forgive them for supporting this monstrosity.
Horse-trading away America’s future, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), whose support for this measure could lead to his electoral defeat in his conservative home state in 2012, insisted on $100 million extra for Medicaid for Nebraska. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) cut a deal to exempt 800,000 seniors in Florida from possible benefit cuts by private Medicare Advantage plans.
