In his ruling, Judge Roger Vinson, a Republican appointee, said that the law’s requirement to carry insurance or pay a fee “is outside Congress’ Commerce Clause power, and it cannot be otherwise authorized by an assertion of power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. It is not constitutional.”
The ruling also said that entire law “must be declared void,” because the mandate to carry insurance is “not severable” from the rest of the law.
Judge Vinson, of the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida, ruled against the plaintiffs and in favor of the Obama administration on one point, saying that the law’s expansion of the Medicaid federal-state insurance program for the poor does not violate the Constitution.
He wrote that states “have little recourse to remaining the very junior partner in this partnership.”
Here are some key excerpts from the opinion:
The main constitutional issued boiled down, in Judge Vinson’s words:
At issue here, as in the other cases decided so far, is the assertion that the Commerce Clause can only reach individuals and entities engaged in an “activity”; and because the plaintiffs maintain that an individual’s failure to purchase health insurance is, almost by definition, “inactivity,” the individual mandate goes beyond the Commerce Clause and is unconstitutional. The defendants contend that activity is not required before Congress can exercise its Commerce Clause power, but that, even if it is required, not having insurance constitutes activity.
On the unprecedented reach of the health-care law:
[A]s Congress’ attorneys in the Congressional Research Service (“CRS”) and Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) advised long before the Act was passed into law, the notion of Congress having the power under the Commerce Clause to directly impose an individual mandate to purchase health care insurance is “novel”
and “unprecedented.”. . .
Never before has Congress required that everyone buy a product from a private company (essentially for life) just for being alive and residing in the United States.
Whether Congress can regulate “inactivity”:
It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause. If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the Act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce”, it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. (citations omitted).
Continues Judge Vinson:
It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power” and we would have a Constitution in name only. Surely this is not what the Founding Fathers could have intended.
On whether decision to not be insured constitutes an “activity” that can be regulated under the Commerce Clause:
The defendants next contend that the uninsured have made the calculated decision to engage in market timing and try to finance their future medical needs out-of-pocket rather than through insurance, and that this “economic decision” is tantamount to activity.
. . .
The problem with this legal rationale, however, is it would essentially have unlimited application. There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that — when aggregated with similar economic decisions — affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.
On whether the plaintiffs can rely instead on the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause:
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held, and the emphasized text makes clear, that the [Necessary and Proper] Clause is not an independent source of federal power; rather, it is simply “a caveat that the Congress possesses all the means necessary to carry out the specifically granted . . . powers . . . ‘and all other Powers vested by this Constitution.’
. . .
The Necessary and Proper Clause cannot be utilized to “pass laws for the accomplishment of objects” that are not within Congress’ enumerated powers. As the previous analysis of the defendants’ Commerce Clause argument reveals, the individual mandate is neither within the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution. To uphold that provision via application of the Necessary and Proper Clause would authorize Congress to reach and regulate far beyond the currently established “outer limits” of the Commerce Clause and effectively remove all limits on federal power.
On whether the “individual mandate” is severable from the rest of the health-care law:
First, the Act does not contain a “severability clause,” which is commonly included in legislation to provide that if any part or provision is held invalid, then the rest of the statute will not be affected.
. . .
Moreover, the defendants have conceded that the Act’s health insurance reforms cannot survive without the individual mandate, which is extremely significant because the various insurance provisions, in turn, are the very heart of the Act itself. The health insurance reform provisions were cited repeatedly during the health care debate, and they were instrumental in passing the Act.
Read the entire 78-page ruling. (Pdf.)
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University of Chicago law professor and former Obama colleague Richard Epstein in an interview with Reason TV: (Source Wall Street Journal ) Emphasis LCs
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Reason: The economy has lost 3.3 million jobs, consumer confidence is half its historical average, and unemployment is 9 percent. To what extent is Obama responsible for this?
Richard Epstein: He’s not largely or exclusively responsible, but he’s certainly added another nail into the coffin. The early George Bush—I think he got a little bit better through his term—and Obama have a lot in common. Bush wanted a pint-sized stimulus program that failed and Obama wanted a giant-sized stimulus program that failed. Neither of them is a strong believer in laissez-faire principles. The difference between them, which is why Obama is the more dangerous man ultimately, is he has very little by way of a skill set to understand the complex problems he wants to address, but he has this unbounded confidence in himself.
Reason: So he’s the perfect Chicago faculty member.
Epstein: He was actually a bad Chicago faculty member in this sense: He was an adjunct, and we always hoped he’d participate in the general intellectual discourse, but he was always so busy with collateral adventures that he essentially kept to himself. The problem when you keep to yourself is you don’t get to hear strong ideas articulated by people who disagree with you. So he passed through Chicago without absorbing much of the internal culture.
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Many times people attempt to elevate Barack Obama as a “professor” at University of Chicago Law but he was an “adjunct” and not a “professor” but a lecturer. As explained by Professor Epstein he “passed through Chicago” as I’ve always claimed. From Hawaii via Indonesia and parts unknown to Occidental College in California, Columbia University in New York (his Bill Ayers connection) and Harvard Law.
Concerning his lack of a “skill set” Obama has a knack for moving up and building a skeleton resume that impresses enough people who hear him speak but this is really about the Obama “smoke and mirrors”, the empty suit who is adept at fooling people with impressions not substance.
His “unbounded confidence in himself” is more about his massive ego, noticed by many foreign leaders, than any real knowledge that can only be gained by years of experience.
Barack Obama finally outed himself to the American public but he is still “dangerous” because he not only lacks a skill set to solve complex problems but his radical ideology that is far left is dangerous to the US Constitution and ultimately to the way of life in America. Indeed!
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Investing is now the new code word for Liberal spending. Barack Obama invoked “investing” into his State of the Union address over and over again. In the real world of American politics spending equals waste equals political investment with taxpayer money.
Mr. Obama would like to invest $2.5 trillion dollars of his budget money into solar panels, other “green” jobs, funding public school teachers retirement funds and those high-speed railways speeding off to nowhere. In building and repairing more infrastructure I suppose more of those costly billboards will go up advertising more stimulus and telling how your tax money is at work. If history suggest anything this is all more spin, more rhetoric, more and more Obama lies.
We’re still looking for those 3 million new jobs that never showed up for the last $814 billion in “stimulus” waste, er, investment.
We’ve already seen the movie Obama is encouraging, it’s his sequel into bankruptcy oblivion and we shouldn’t be buying the lie one more time. Of course, this author never bought the lie the first time(s) as Obama is not difficult to figure out if your paying attention so pay attention.
Here is a recap of Obama non-defense spending or investment:
Total private business investment has fallen by 10% since 2008 as governments record spending has increased debt, deficits, destroyed the economy and has put fear into businesses owners who would rather sit on capital instead of really invest it when they have no viable signal that government will quit growing with plans for huge tax programs.
An enormous problem with government “investment” is there is no return on that investment for investors known as the taxpayers. President Reagan asked in his debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980:
“Are you better off now than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?
Are our schools better of than they were decades ago? Is unemployment at an acceptable level as it was in the last administration? Is the huge government return on their huge investment on green energy returning a profit for taxpayers or creating sustainable jobs and new energy or did the number of wind project actually drop by 50%?
An entrepreneur would not keep placing money into failed projects, they may never have entered into them after careful study. The cost of education is higher and higher but the short video explains what the return on government investment is.
The best plan for government is to lower taxes on business, cut spending, reform or remove entitlement projects, streamline and privatize Fannie May, Freddie Mac, Medicare and Social Security while repealing Obamacare and starting over.
The fact is American exceptionalism has always been about freedom, liberty, free markets and the individual. The private sector business, the entrepreneur of America has always created jobs and economy. Big government has always stolen private treasure, redistributed wealth, destroyed jobs and never created a growing economy.
When government grows the American economy suffers and Americans suffer. Real investment comes from the private sector not big government. Indeed!
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