Haley Barbour:
“Governor Haley Barbour today requested Attorney General Jim Hood challenge the constitutionality of the healthcare reform legislation approved by the U.S. Congress.
The bill has serious constitutional problems, Governor Barbour said, starting with the fact that it forces individuals to purchase health insurance.
“A physician’s creed is to ‘First, Do No Harm,’” Governor Barbour said. “The healthcare legislation passed Sunday infects the economy with harmful tax increases, strips benefits from senior citizens and robs each citizen of their basic freedom to choose their own healthcare.”
Governor Barbour requested an answer from the Attorney General by noon Thursday, March 25. If Hood refuses to file suit to protect the interests of Mississippians, Governor Barbour said he intends to file the lawsuit.
“This costly unfunded mandate could not have come at a worse time for our state’s economy,” he said. “Mississippi continues to see declining monthly revenue collections, and we have been forced to cut priority areas like education and public safety.
Under the plan, 15 million people would be moved to the federal-state Medicaid program, which already strains our state budget every year. Once the temporary funding is gone, we can expect taxes to spike by hundreds of millions of dollars for Mississippians who will have to pay for this expanded program.”
The resulting higher taxes will hurt struggling families and businesses who are trying to stay afloat in this recession. In addition, businesses that must pay more for health insurance costs will not have anything left to create new jobs.
Working families with private insurance will not be able to keep the coverage they have. Instead, those families will be paying more from their pockets for healthcare.
“The federal government is clearly overreaching its authority by forcing Mississippians and all Americans to buy a product simply because he or she is alive,” Governor Barbour said.
Obamacare harms senior citizens by causing changes to Medicare coverage. President Obama’s own Department of Health and Human Services says the plan will cause insurance premiums to skyrocket and force $500 billion in cuts to the Medicare program for senior citizens.”
Go, Haley!!
Yeah, Haley Barbour gave that slug Hood until HIGH NOON on Thursday, March 25, to reply to him as to whether he would file the lawsuit.
Otherwise Haley will do it.
I hope Hood, the democrat, doesn’t file.
Much prefer Governor Barbour handle it properly.
Medicaid/MediCal is a federal program. It is not one authorized by a specific enumerated federal power in the US Constitution. Under what is termed the federal "spending power" to "lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States...," Congress has the ability to "fix the terms on which it shall disburse federal money to the States..."
In New York v. United States 505 US 144 (1992), the Court declared: "...'Congress may attach conditions on the receipt of federal funds.' South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U. S., at 206. Such conditions must (among other requirements) bear some relationship to the purpose of the federal spending, id., at 207-208, and n. 3; otherwise, of course, the spending power could render academic the Constitution's other grants and limits of federal authority. Where the recipient of federal funds is a State, as is not unusual today, the conditions attached to the funds by Congress may influence a State's legislative choices. See Kaden, Politics, Money, and State Sovereignty: The Judicial Role, 79 Colum. L. Rev. 847, 874-881 (1979). Dole was one such case: The Court found no constitutional flaw in a federal statute directing the Secretary of Transportation to withhold federal highway funds from States failing to adopt Congress' choice of a minimum drinking age. Similar examples abound. See, e. g., Fullilove v. Klutznick, 448 U.S. 448, 478-480 (1980); Massachusetts v. United States, 435 U.S. 444, 461-462 (1978); Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563, 568-569 (1974); Oklahoma v. Civil Service Comm'n, 330 U.S. 127, 142-144 (1947)." and .."if a State's citizens view federal policy as sufficiently contrary to local interests, they may elect to decline a federal grant..."
Under "cooperative federalism," the states may craft their own program as long as it meets minimum federal standards. As Governor Schwarzenegger recently discovered in court when he tried to cut back on the federal IHSS (In Home Support Services) program, he cannot cut the program beyond the minimum standards set by the feds, but he can eliminate it all together.
The question is, whether the states have the courage to let go of the banana by declining to participate in the federal Medicaid program.