"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called Becerra “woefully unqualified” and “a partisan politician with no expertise in healthcare” in a statement after his confirmation."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
All that post-17th Amendment RINO McConnell ever had to do to shut down unconstitutional federal interference in state healthcare is to read Free Republic to point out the following.
Previous generations of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified what anybody who studies the Constitution would conclude, that states have never expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power to dictate, regulate, tax and spend in the name of INTRAstate healthcare.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"Inspection laws, quarantine laws, health laws of every description [emphasis added], as well as laws for regulating the internal commerce of a state and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c., are component parts of this mass.” —Justice Barbour, New York v. Miln., 1837.
"Obviously, direct control of medical practice [emphases added] in the states is beyond the power of the federal government.” —Linder v. United States, 1925.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
But until patriots work with their state lawmakers to put a stop to unconstitutional federal taxes, taxes that Congress cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers according to the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt above, the states are going to continue to struggle to find the revenues that they need to give their respective resident voters the kind healthcare programs that they want.
"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose [emphasis added], serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” —Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.
The constitutionally indefensible Department of Health and Human Services needs to be shut down ASAP imo.
Insights welcome.
No government ever reduces the scope of its influence or power. “We have to pass more laws and regulations’ is the prime directive of bureaucracies.
It matters not that HHS, Education, and a slew of other agencies are a waste and not part of the power of the federal government under the constitution. All three branches decided these ARE in the constitutional, and the government has the last word.
All those SCOTUS cites predate the “new” commerce clause jurisprudence, started around Schecter Poultry and running through Wickard v. Filburn and more recently the pot decision, Raich.
Even gun regulation is now justified as constitutional by dint of commerce clause. And if that doesn’t work, Roberts will just relabel the law as a tax. All taxes are constitutional.