Nancy Pelosi Doesn’t Think Constitutionality Of A Health Insurance Mandate Is A Serious Question
A CNS News reporter asks Nancy Pelosi an extremely pertinent question: What part of the Constitution gives Congress the power to require that Americans purchase something?
The obvious answer is that no part of the Constitution gives Congress that power. Meaning that Congress doesn’t have that power. Meaning that any federal law with such a requirement would be unconstitutional by definition.
Which is why Pelosi chooses to bluster her way past the question instead of answering it.
According to Ed Morrissey, a Pelosi spokesperson responded to inquiries about the question by saying the question wasn’t a serious one. But it is, in fact, a very serious question.
There are no unserious questions about the Constitution’s restraint of federal authority.
It will be interesting to see what Constitutional justification the liberals use to support an individual insurance mandate. Interstate commerce? It would take a pretty strained interpretation of the intent of the founders with the interstate commerce clause to suggest that they intended that power to be used to force Americans to buy something they might not want to buy. After all, if we can be forced to buy health care under the auspices of that clause couldn’t we also be forced to buy bread and milk from government stores as well? The federal government already abuses the commerce clause powers, but to say that it justifies an individual insurance mandate goes beyond mere abuse to outright ignoring the law.
But all of that is made moot by the fact that Congress already prohibits interstate health insurance transactions. We’re not allowed to buy health insurance across state lines, so the commerce clause doesn’t apply.
The liberals could also trot out the “general welfare” clause of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, but to interpret that to mean Congress can do whatever it pleases as long as its for the “general welfare” of the country is being served (and “general welfare” is certainly a subjective term) is to suggest that the rest of the constitutional restraints on federal authority are meaningless.
Really, the government health care proponents would be better off doing what they usually do which is using threats to withhold federal funding to arm-twist the states, not under the same constitutional restrictions as Congress, into passing these insurance mandates. And the key may be a version of the health care bill that was circulating weeks ago that would allow states to “opt out” of the public option. That legislative dodge, if worded right, may give the liberals the political cover they need for a legal national insurance mandate. Tags: Asshats, Domestic Issues, Politics
