Florida Attorney General Threatens Lawsuit Against Health Care Mandate
Making a delicately nuanced argument about the U.S. Constitution, former Republican congressman and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said Tuesday that provisions to force Americans to buy health care or pay a fine are not legal and he will file a lawsuit if they become law.
In a memo sent to the House and Senate leadership, the attorney general called the mandate requiring Americans to get health care a “living tax” that unconstitutionally penalizes people for being inactive.
“Never before has Congress compelled Americans, under threat of government fines or taxes, to purchase an unwanted product or service simply as a constitution of existing in the country (a ‘living tax’),” McCollum wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, R-Nev., Minority Leader Mitch McCollum, R-Ky., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Pa., and Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.
According to the attorney general, a citizen’s choice not to buy health insurance cannot rationally be construed as economic activity subject to the Commerce Clause.
“The Commerce Clause gives no authority for Congress to transform a citizen’s individual choice to be inactivein the marketplace into a compulsion to purchase apparently unwanted insurance or be penalized,” he wrote.
Pelosi: Brown Win Won’t Stop Health Care
Good news: Obama to take “combative” approach to Brown victory
A follow-up to last week’s video clip of The One promising to make the midterms a referendum on ObamaCare, which is working like gangbusters right now for Marcia or Marla or whatever her name is. Not sure if there’s actual strategy at work here or if it’s just their “do the opposite of what Clinton did” instincts at work. Clinton didn’t pass health care and got wiped out in the midterms, ergo we must pass health care regardless of how many people hate it. Clinton tacked towards the center after he was repudiated by voters, ergo…
President Barack Obama plans a combative response if, as White House aides fear, Democrats lose Tuesday’s special Senate election in Massachusetts, close advisers say.
“This is not a moment that causes the president or anybody who works for him to express any doubt,” a senior administration official said. “It more reinforces the conviction to fight hard.”…
There won’t be any grand proclamation that “the era of Big Government is over” — the words President Bill Clinton uttered after Republicans won the Congress in the 1990s and he was forced to trim a once-ambitious agenda.
“The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall,” a presidential adviser said. “The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’”
Translation: If your head hurts from trying to deal with ObamaCare, wait until they get around to cap-and-trade and amnesty.
My favorite part? Obama’s the underdog against Scott Brown or something:
But the president’s advisers plan to spin [Brown's win] as a validation of the underdog arguments that fueled Obama’s insurgent candidacy.
“The painstaking campaign for change over two years in 2007 and 2008 has become a painstaking effort in the White House, too,” the official said. “The old habits of Washington aren’t going away easy.”
Imagine the contempt you’d have to have for voters’ intelligence to spin a Republican win — in Massachusetts — as some sort of business-as-usual victory for entrenched interests. Hey, champ? In case you haven’t heard, Republicans don’t win in New England anymore. Or at least, they didn’t until you launched Project Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste. This victory belongs to you as much as it does to Scotty B; take credit for it.
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