Health Bill Set To Become Supreme Battle

Whether they welcome it or not, the Supreme Court is likely to be hearing arguments very soon on the question of the Constitutionality of ObamaCare.

What a tangled web this health care reform has become. The road to this
place has been bumpy, and we have seen many new things along the way. We have seen an unprecedented audacity in the way Congress behaves, witnessed blatant and brazen bribery and exceptional extortion, and a complete contempt for the demands of the American people who - last time I checked - are still "the boss".

We have been lied to and we know it, as do the people who did the lying. Adding insult to injury, a complicit press has aided in that deception and tried to pretend that they didn't, opting instead to portray their consumers as either idiots or liars. And they wonder why circulation is down at print outlets and viewership is abysmal for the electronic venues.

Congress and the President have manipulated fiscal calculations and massaged projections in a clear attempt to dupe not only members of their own party in both houses, but also the media and their constituents. Many bought the story, and we now have the history of the 44th President of the United States signing this rubbish in the textbooks of days beyond.

One would have thought that with the overwhelming majority the Democrats have enjoyed that this would have been a smooth process, but that wasn't the case. The main reason was because an almost equal majority of Congress' employers were opposed, and were not timid in making that sentiment known. Rather than respect that opposition, politicians elected instead to portray those plaintiffs as dangerous and mistaken or worse, evil racists. (Love that one).

Now we face the reality that the president has signed the legislation into law, and all that remains is the tedium of dotting "I"'s and crossing "T"'s, right? Well, it may not be that simple. It seems that "We the Opposition" may well yet be victorious. Despite claims that the bill was not being "rushed through" the process by Democrats - who claimed that exhaustive work and diligent attention to detail was exercised - we learn that they have sold, and the President has signed, a work unfinished.

Still, that is not their downfall, and not even close to an error worthy of scrutiny by the Supreme Court. That body, being the third and co-equal branch of our government - as erected by this countries Founders - deals solely with issues of the founding document, The U.S. Constitution. Both hailed and vilified at different times in our history, that body is also the final barrier protecting our guaranteed liberties.

So it is that 14 State Attorneys General have determined that the requirement of the new health care legislation that every citizen of the U.S. purchase a product sold by the federal government is a direct violation of the Constitution. They are also filing suit that, as a result, the entire bill is null and void. If this doesn't perk the ears of the nine justices, nothing will.

Democrats claim validity through the Commerce Clause, but as the latest Attorney General to join the coalition - Washington State AG Rob McKenna - says,

"First of all, we are talking about forcing people to enter the stream of commerce, not about those already in, and need to be regulated. This will force people to go into the private market and buy a product on penalty of fine or going to jail. That is unprecedented, and there is no principal distinction between forcing Americans to go out into the private sector and buy a private product and forcing them to buy anything else that Congress gets in its mind to do."

Not content to violate the intent of "some old guys who wrote the Constitution", Democrats added the twisting of the rule written by one of their own, Robert Byrd. They negated the significance of the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts through the Reconciliation process by claiming that the Health Care bill would reduce the deficit, but they did so by citing incomplete budget projections by the Congressional Budget Office, which were based on a series of assumptions. Add to that simple fact the disclosure of coverage gaps in the original bill and the additional, uncalculated costs, and the minute deficit reduction touted by the Democrats is in serious jeopardy. That didn't stop the steamroller.

As we move forward, and as the details of this travesty sour the public mood even further, we can expect the legal challenges to snowball. We can also expect to see a Supreme Court recently stung by the president at the State of the Union address as receptive to the prospect of some form of retribution. While I don't expect the honorables to engage in the same chicanery as our Congresspeople, and believe that they will exercise stringent scrutiny of the cases presented, I must also believe that they are hopeful of an ironclad case being brought before them.

Sphere: Related Content