Court Must Protect Public From ObamaCare Invasion
- IBD Editorial
Posted 03/23/2012 06:59 PM ET
Limited Government: The Supreme Court begins ObamaCare hearings Monday. If it doesn't strike down the law, then there will be no checks left on Washington. America will have been fundamentally changed.
The court has set aside six hours of debate for the legislation that turned 2 years old on Friday, an acknowledgment by the justices that they believe they have a difficult decision ahead of them.
But we take a different view.
It shouldn't take more than a few minutes for the court to declare ObamaCare unconstitutional. Nowhere in the Constitution is such an encroachment on private affairs even remotely authorized or envisioned.
We're aware some supposedly conservative judges have already upheld ObamaCare's individual mandate, perhaps the most unconstitutional provision in a law filled with them. Even so, we don't see how a coherent case can be made that ObamaCare is within government's constitutional restraints.
Let's start with the individual mandate. It requires every U.S. adult who isn't otherwise covered to buy a health insurance plan or face fines. It's not by coincidence that it's the point that landed ObamaCare in court.
Never in our history has the federal government forced citizens to buy a product or service until the Democrats' Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed.
Even as Congress routinely and for decades passed laws clearly outside constitutional limits, it felt that forcing citizens to buy something they don't need or want — or couldn't afford — was going too far. Lawmakers behaved as if there was one line they wouldn't cross.
Then Barack Obama, who said he would fundamentally change this country, was elected president.
He quickly reminded the opposition that "I won," during policy discussions. A little more than a year later, emboldened Democrats, without a single Republican vote, forced ObamaCare on the country.
They excuse their invasion of private lives by citing the Constitution's Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the authority to "regulate commerce ... among the several states."
This is a gross misreading of the clause.
It does not give Congress license to pass whatever laws it wished. The clause was intended to provide Congress the authority to prevent states from erecting trade barriers between each other. No less than James Madison himself said the clause was not "to be used for the positive purposes of the general government" — that is, to make you do something.
If the Commerce Clause did in fact give Washington the authority to pass whatever laws it wished to regulate activities that affect interstate commerce, there would be no need for a Constitution. The legislative and executive branches would be free to rule by fiat.
Unless the U.S. is no longer a free nation in which the state is limited, the Supreme Court has no option but to strike down ObamaCare. Nowhere in the Constitution is the federal government granted the authority to establish the individual mandate or to intrude into health care at all. Its powers are enumerated and few.
If they are not, then government can freely impose its will on a conquered citizenry. If ObamaCare is upheld, America's road to serfdom gets much smoother. |
