Hmmmm, I thought the RATS were saying this was Constitutional because of the Commerce clause. IMHO the Constitution trumps the Commerce clause. You can’t force people to buy something. I think the states are drawing a line in the sand and saying not more.
It is a sad state when the obvious enumeration clauses are violated yet the courts have consistently trumped enumeration with their radical interpretation of the commerce clause. Everything is a servant now to that one clause.
The commerce clause is part of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3). “You can’t force people to buy something” only lasts until a federal judge finds that not buying insurance is an action that in the aggregate affects interstate commerce. This finding stands unless the judge is found by a higher court to have abused his discretion in making the finding. In its form, the commerce finding would be one of fact, to which higher courts normally defer.
The 10th Amendment is still part of the Constitution, though it has been generally neutered by commerce clause cases. The bright spot is that current Court members do remember the 10th, and have struck down laws as stretching the commerce clause too far.
I got a question. I’ve been saying the Osamacare mandate differs from Social Security because the one is health insurance and the other is more like paying into a pension fund. I’ve gotten a lot of pushback on this. Do you agree, or do you think that we should think of being forced to pay FICA as also unconstitutional? I need a good argument here for one particular person I know who is on the fence about jumping off the Dimocrat sinking ship. Thanks in advance.