Virginia AG: If Obama's Mandate Stands, the Gov't ‘Can Order You To Do Anything’

CNSNews.com ^ | March 19, 2012 | Melanie Hunter

[CNSNews.com]

“If the government can just order you to buy something, and fine you if you don’t” – the way the individual mandate of Obamacare requires every American to buy government-approved health insurance and fines them if they don’t comply – “they can order you to do anything,” Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said during an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Newsmaker” on Sunday.

Cuccinelli, the first attorney general to file a lawsuit challenging Obamacare, said out of 16 judges that have heard the lawsuit so far, only one has ruled that the fine amounts to a tax.

“Of 16 judges, one found it to be a tax. Unfortunately for Virginia, he sits in the 4th Circuit and he’ll be there for a long time. But, this is a truly radical position, because if the government can just order you to buy something, and fine you if you don’t, and because they can fine you, that comes under the taxing power and therefore makes it constitutional, they can order you to do anything,” Cuccinelli said.

“There has never been a case like this ever before in the over 200 years since the Constitution was passed. The federal government has never compelled people to buy a product under the guise of regulating commerce,” he said.

“The centerpiece constitutional issue is the individual mandate – the requirement in the health care bill that every American buy government-approved health insurance, and this is done under the Commerce Clause. It is commonly talked about as the 10th Amendment – it is not a 10th Amendment case,” Cuccinelli said.

The question at hand, he said, is whether Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce allows them “compel you to buy health insurance.”

“And our side obviously says, No. The federal government says, ‘Yes.’ And there has never been a case like this ever before in the over 200 years since the Constitution was passed. The federal government has never compelled people to buy a product under the guise of regulating commerce,” Cuccinnell added.

He said when they filed their case against Obamacare on March 23, 2010, “it was all about the Commerce clause,” and the critics predicted that the federal government would win, “but as we just kept making our case – and ‘we’ here is all of the states that address the limited government side of this that said this is too much power for the federal government. As we just kept making the case, kept making the case, gradually, it became clear the other side began to get worried that they could lose.”

“They started out saying, ‘This is a slam dunk. We’ll never lose, etcetera.’ And of course, we won in the district court, and so about a month later in April of 2010 if you read the accounts, you’ll start to see this tax argument arise. And what it is is that the fine you have to pay, if you do not buy the mandated health insurance, which is called a penalty in the bill, is in fact a tax,” he said.

“And that’s important because Congress has very broad taxing power, and my prediction in the outset of this is case is that no judge or justice anywhere in America would agree with that argument, and so far I’ve been wrong by one” – the judge in the 4th Circuit Court in Virginia, who ruled in favor of Obamacare, Cuccinelli said.

[Bryanw92]

Duh! This is how you bloodlessly convert a free nation into as communist one. $8/gal gas, $500 power bills, $10 milk, mandated insurance coverage along with flat wages or lowering wages and you can begin to offer some subsidies to those who play along. Even the working class eventually has to take the money to keep a roof over their head and food on the table.

The poor are already there. We lament about the 40% who don’t pay taxes and the professional welfare recipients constantly here. One household at time, the free American will fall until the middle class, called the Petit Bourgeois by Marx, ceases to exist.

Then, there is no one left to defend the capitalists and the real revolution begins. The playbook is short and to the point. We need to start calling them out as the communists they are and stop dancing around the truth, afraid to call a spade a spade.

[SaraJohnson]

Does the Virgina DA have standing? No one else does. They are all on their knees with McCain’s knife in their backs.

[MrB]

The left has been very effective with their charges of “McCarthyism”
in shutting up anyone that correctly identifies their
ideology and goals as communist.

[JediJones]

I wonder if Mittsky Romneyev would support a federal constitutional amendment banning the states from being able to “order you to do anything.” Unless that was already supposed to be covered by the ban on slavery.

[Jacquerie]

Administrative agencies have long written regs with the force of law. They then execute their regs, and set fines for violations. What our Framers recognized as tyranny is just another day at the rat gulag.

This fine for not buying insurance is just another step on a road well traveled.