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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Baker who wrote (134522)	3/24/2010 9:25:01 AM
From: Dale Baker	Respond to of 542821

On the legal challenge to HCR: Theda Skocpol Professor of Government and Sociology, Harvard : This is all just pot-banging for political purposes. Even the most ridiculous judges won't buy this. The key indicator is no case law cited in the filings. Timothy Stoltzfus Jost Law Professor at the Washington and Lee University : The cases are totally without legal merit and purely political in their motivation. The individual insurance mandate is a constitutional exercise of the commerce clause power of Congress, and is supported by a long line of Supreme Court cases recognizing the authority of Congress to regulate economic activity. It is not, moreover, clear that the federal courts even have jurisdiction to hear a state challenge to this mandate as the states are not harmed by it. The Virginia statute purporting to nullify the federal law has no legal effect, since states may not under our Constitution nullify federal law. The Florida case also claims that the Medicaid expansions and exchange provisions violate the sovereignty of the states. This claim is based on a misunderstanding of the statute, which does not require the states to do anything. If states don't want the billions of dollars the law offers them to cover millions of their residents with Medicaid, they don't have to participate in Medicaid. If they don't want to run the exchange, the federal government will do it for them. We have an activist Supreme Court that has shown itself capable of making result-oriented political decisions abandoning long-standing precedent. But these claims are just too over the top. These cases are going nowhere. But the AGs who are bringing them may well be headed somewhere - to a higher office. At least that seems to be their hope. If anyone is seriously interested in the legal issues these cases raise, see www.oneillhealthreformblog.org, which has multiple posts discussing the legal issues in health reform. Dean Baker Co-director, Center for Economic and Policy Research : What happened to the Republicans' opposition to frivolous lawsuits? Joshua A. Tucker Professor of Politics, NYU : I’ll leave the legal arguments to those better suited to answer such questions, but it clearly represents yet another political bet that public opposition to health care reform will remain strong. As I have noted on The Monkey Cage, Republicans may be overestimating the proportion of people who truly want to see the bill repealed. Polling numbers on opposition to health care reform has always come both from those on the right who believe it goes too far, and thus would probably like to see some (but not all!) of the bill repealed, and also those on the left who think the bill does not go far enough. These “left opponents” are primarily not going to want to see the bill repealed – if anything, they are going to want to see it strengthened. Depending on the proportion of past opposition that has been driven by these “left opponents”, Republican opposition may be playing to a much smaller proportion of the population than they think. If so, continually waving the flag of opposition to health care reform may turn out to be counter-productive politically, especially among the independents and Democrats they hope to win over in 2010.

To: Dale Baker who wrote (134522)	3/24/2010 9:33:54 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Respond to of 542821

It is disgusting. They have lost all vestiges of being a "responsible opposition".

To: Dale Baker who wrote (134522)	3/24/2010 9:48:51 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 542821

Jack Welch: Republicans In For 'Awful Shock' In November (VIDEO) Michael Sweeney \| March 23, 2010, 10:13AM On CNBC Tuesday, former General Electric CEO Jack Welch warned Republicans expecting big gains in the midterm elections this fall that they'll "get a large shock." Citing improved economic indicators, Welch said, "I don't think [the Democrats] are going to be wiped out," and said he expects them to have enough votes in Congress following the election to move forward on other parts of their agenda, like cap and trade. Here's the video. (The relevant section begins at 14:45). tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com