Congressional Mandates Go Back over 200 Years
If Congress can order seamen to buy hospital insurance, can it not order teachers or short-order cooks or undertakers to do so? Arguments that the framers of the Constitution were against individual mandates are clearly untrue: some of them actually voted for one or more and specifically for a health insurance mandate. Furthermore, Presidents Washington and Adams signed bills with mandates that they could have vetoed. It is surprising that although independent authorities have verified Elhauge's story, it has gotten so little publicity although it was mentioned on the Smithsonian Institution's Website last week.
Yep.
Folks, the federal government has been telling us what to do from Day One. Falling back on the Founding Fathers isn't going to cut it anymore. They did the same thing that our leaders today are doing because they recognized that there was a greater good served by these sorts of laws.
We live in a culture with other people and we can't simply do what we want all the time...a phrase I find myself saying quite a bit these days with a junior high school kid in my house. Hmm....
1798 - the same Congress that passed the Alien and Sedition Acts. Seems they didn't have much regard for the Constitution they had so recently created, did they?
ReplyDeleteI mean, if you are going to praise their wisdom on the requirement for seamen to have care, you certainly must also think the A&S Acts were sound legislation as well.
And speaking of the health law...
ReplyDeleteHow well the new health care law succeeds in covering millions of the poorest Americans will depend largely on undecided governors of both parties, who gathered here this weekend and spoke of the challenges of weighing the law’s costs and benefits in a highly charged political atmosphere and a time of fiscal uncertainty.
NYT
And what the White House wants...
The Obama administration is aggressively pushing states to implement the healthcare reform law now that the Supreme Court has upheld it.
The people aren't convinced, the governors aren't convinced - but the progressive true believers - they're quite sure [just like any other religious zealot].
Folks, the federal government has been telling us what to do from Day One.
ReplyDeleteYou keep conflating this one with something is it not.
Like the requirement that able-bodied men purchase firearms, the provisions for seamen looked ahead to future military needs. And just as the one arose under the power to provide for the militia, the other arose under the power to provide for the navy.
It thus is evident that these early federal statutes do not support the constitutionality of congressionally mandated healthcare, whether an employer mandate or an individual mandate. On the contrary, the early federal mandates to provide healthcare or to purchase health insurance arose under the government’s power to provide for the navy. This was a military power, and the statutes adopted under it are not precedents for a power to regulate civilians under the Commerce Clause.
Mark's right. Big Daddy's laying it down, and you might as well lay back and enjoy it, bitches, 'cuz it's for your own good! You just wait, you'll be asking for more before we be done wid you!
ReplyDelete