Here are three reasons why we believe the healthcare scheme Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590) before the Senate at this late hour tonight--at the Democrats own choosing--to be unconstitutional:
(1) Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." No powers to regulate health insurance are found in the constitution. End of discussion here: states or the people have jurisdiction in the healthcare arena. The bill is unconstitutional.
(2) Eighth Amendment: Protection from "excessive fines" is guaranteed. Never before in the history of our nation have we fined for NOT purchasing something. This bill would require everyone to purchase health insurance coverage under threat of fine and/or jail. Any fine would be excessive. Joining this amendment is the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches. To enforce their law of everyone having insurance must needs be a requirement of verification so that we would allow the Government to search our records for insurance coverage verification. If the burden of insurance coverage verification were placed in the responsibility of the people, then they would force anyone without health insurance to violate the Fifth Amendment which prohibits self-incrimination! What a mess!!! No wonder GOP Senators have declared this portion of the bill blatantly unconstitutional and have assured that it will be challenged in court. (Hertitage.org also offers a lengthy but excellent article explaining the unconstitutionality of mandating insurance purchase in detail.)
(3) Bill of Attainder: We assert the $1.2B "Cornhusker Kickback" is a bill of attainder which is prohibited in Art. 1 Sect. 9: (from Wikipedia: "A bill of attainder, is a legislative act which inflicts punishment without judicial trial and includes any legislative act which takes away the life, liberty or property of a particular named or easily ascertainable person or group of persons because the legislature thinks them guilty of conduct which deserves punishment.") Reid's manager's amendment to the bill was debated in a secret, partisan manner so as to punish those states not in on the bargaining with the Medicare healthcare costs of the state of Nebraska whose Senator Nelson was in on the secret scheme. The bill was released at the beginning of the biggest holiday shopping weekend of the year and is scheduled to be voted on not many minutes from now before the weekend closes.
Illegal Alien Crime Tracker 2024 – Utah
5 weeks ago
6 comments:
Unfortunately, Congress doesn't care about the Constitution as much as it should. They just fling legislation in every direction and wait to see what sticks.
If you want an example of a bill of attainder, look no further than what Congress did to ACORN (PDF).
The requirement to buy insurance or pay a fine, known as the individual mandate, was invented by Republicans. While unprecedented and wrong, it is nevertheless constitutional.
This is no Fourth Amendment violation. Why wasn't everybody concerned about the rape of the Fourth Amendment under the USA PATRIOT Act, which Congress might extend soon?
RK: We agree. There seems to be little accountability for Constitution shredders. Being voted out of office is a meager penalty for breaking one's solemn oath.
++++
rmwarnick: Withdrawal of funds or a benefit as in the case of ACORN is different than imposing a penalty or cost. ACORN lost their funding, they weren't slapped with an extra tax or penalty. This is no bill of attainder and ACORN should be permanently de-funded. Indeed, we would hope you would join us in admonishing AG Holder to have a Federal investigation of this corrupt organization.
We find your assertion that the GOP as birthed the individual mandate to be false. Going back to the last big healthcare debate in 1994, Sens. Chafee (RINO, supports Obama, 96% liberal, your type of guy?) and Mitchell (Democrat) were the two big supporters of the individual mandate. To us, this is an issue propagated by Progressives which are found in both sides of the aisle in sundry degrees.
We enjoyed your referred article; thank you for reminding us of Romney's support for the Massachusetts individual mandate. Over the past year as we study and learn in depth, we have experienced a decline in enthusiasm towards Romney as we eye him carefully for 2012 prospects.
This said, your Wa Post article missed the crucial point: we are talking about what is prohibited in the US Constitution, not what is permitted in the Mass. state constitution which honestly we have no idea. An individual mandate in Mass. however abhorrent might be constitutional—we don’t know; we do know it violates the US Constitution.
++++
Ignatz: Patriot Act, an important topic indeed, is outside the scope of this discussion on Medical care. Again we assert that an individual mandate will require a violation of the Fourth Amendment in its quest for verification.
Can you point me to the relevant portion of the Constitution where it allows for:
An Air Force
The Electoral College
Marriage
Congressional Districts
Freedom of Expression
Jury of Our Peers
No taxation without representation
... I'll check back, to see what you come up with.
(If you can find those, than your argument here is worth considering... if you can't find them in the Constitution, then you are selectively choosing when to impose a literal interpretation of Constitutional allowances, and have reduced yourself to hypocrite at best, irrational moron at worst)
Jasonthe:
Where is the Air Force in the constitution??? Give us a break! If this is the best you can come up with you are really getting desperate. Let’s see, hmmm, could it possibly be found in the mandate “To raise and support Armies”? Or wait--maybe you really want to want to postulate that the Air Force is not part of the “army” or “armed forces” as we call it of the United States which all report to a common commander and ultimately the Chief Commander the POTUS himself?
Tell you what: rather than wasting our time looking up passages for you in the Constitution, present your one single best argument of why our position in untenable and we will respond; otherwise, we have more important things to do.
Post a Comment