Leahy: What Constitution?

Ben,

You what’s really silly? You missed the point. Again.
Apparently, they believe it can’t prevent them from legislating their way around it, either.

The question posed to Leahy was:

“Where, in your opinion, does the Constitution give specific authority for Congress to give an individual mandate for health insurance?”

Leahy, who is Constitutionally illiterate, said:

“We have plenty of authority. Are you saying there is no authority?”

No where in Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which dictates the legislative powers of Congress, does it does it state that government will provide health care to its citizens. Nor does it give Congress the authority to force government-run health care on U.S. cititzens. Healthcare choices are supposed to be left up to the states and individuals.

The problem is, Leahy cannot explain ‘by whose authority’. It’s certainly not guaranteed or mandated in the U.S. Constitution, so maybe it’s one of the many powers the Obama regime simply granted itself, while circumventing the principles thereof.
Like TARP and the forced takeover of private industry: http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/welcome-to-the-kleptocracy/
And the 2010 census: http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/obamas-2010-census-will-violate-the-constitution/

Other problems with reconciling ObamaCare with that pesky Constitution:

Among the problems legal scholars see in the current healthcare bills:
Andrew P. Napolitano, the former New Jersey Superior Court judge…calls Obamacare “unconstitutional at its core.”
The Commerce Clause
The 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

This raises the question: What constitutional authority does the federal government have to require “the people” to buy healthcare insurance?

Ever since the Constitution was ratified, those seeking to expand the federal government’s role have cited Article I, Section 8 — the commerce clause.

Napolitano describes the interstate commerce clause as “the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.”

The clause states Congress shall have the power to “regulate commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”

Proponents would argue that not having an individual mandate would cause disruptions in the flow of goods and services among the states.

Healthcare reform would have a massive impact on one-sixth of the nation’s economy. There is a strong precedent for regulation of the insurance industry, at least on the state level. But courts could view reform as essentially as an entitlement program, not primarily related to commerce, and therefore beyond the federal government’s constitutional mandate.

The irony, says Napolitano, is that many of the current market anomalies in the insurance sector stem from congressional legislation that exempts companies from the competitive pressures of interstate commerce.

“It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the commerce clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state,” Napolitano writes.

“That’s right,” he adds. “Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person’s appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.”

That blatant contradiction is one reason Congress is considering legislation to revoke the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption.
http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/obama_health_constitution/2009/10/18/273679.html

This Democrat-controlled Congress is doing a lot of things not specified in that particular Article of the Constitution.

SFC MAC