Sunday, October 2, 2011

The End of the Beginning

The Obama administration has asked the United States Supreme Court to review a case where part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 was struck down as unconstitutional.   There is also a chance, assuming a Republican victory in 2012, of Obamacare being repealed through the legislative process.  The Republicans running for president certainly seem to be making that a plank in their platform.

Personally, I hope the court takes the case and makes a ruling one way or the other.  The issue of whether or not the government has the power to force citizens to purchase anything from another private entity needs to be decided.  If the act is repealed in Congress, it's only a tactical victory for those of us who believe that the powers of government need to be limited.  Congress can pass other laws that try to do the same thing with no real way to argue that it violates the Constitution.  A Supreme Court decision that holds that practice unconstitutional could be used to block Congress from doing similar things in the future, and would be effectively permanent, unless the Supreme takes the exceedingly rare step of reversing itself.

2 comments:

WS4E said...

If a republican president gets elected, they just need to issue 50 PERMANENT waivers for all 50 states.


What is 50 more on top of the nearly 500 the administration has issued to their friends?

DaddyBear said...

I'd still rather see a Supreme Court decision. A ruling that holds the individual mandate unconstitutional would discourage similar idiocy in Congress in the future.

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