He wasn’t presented with two Democratic options to choose from. He helped CREATE the individual mandate option. His counteroffer was not “tort reform… and letting people in NY buy health insurance from Minnesota” This time it was. What changed over that time period to make the individual mandate not only unconstitutional but just about the worst thing that has ever happened to America?
That’s a failure of your imagination, then. If a Senator feels that any federal involvement in health care is a poor policy choice, but recognizes the mood of the country is such that some health care bill is likely to pass, then it behooves him to sponsor a bill that sets acceptable limits to the prospect. Why would it be otherwise? By sponsoring a bill, he controls (at least to some degree) the starting point of the opposing side of the discussion.
And I can point to many bills that were sponsored by people who clearly didn’t favor them at all. Didn’t a liberal Democrat, during the Bush years, propose a bill re-instating the draft? It was widely agreed that his purpose was to highlight the folly of war, and did not want his bill to pass.
Why does your imagination struggle with those basic concepts?
Dole isn’t taking any position on Obama’s bill, so far as I’m aware.
Romney’s position appears to be that the problem with Obama’s bill is not its provisions, but its status as a federal initiative. Since the Constitution creates a federal government of limited, ennumerated powers, and gives states plenary power, Romney feels that a bill like Obama’s is perfectly acceptable if passed by the individual states, but exceeds the federal government’s limited powers.
This position has, incidentally, been upheld by several federal courts.
I don’t know if Hatch has signed on to the claim that the Obama bill is unconstitutional. Has he?
As for the general issue – again, politics is the art of the possible. His belief in 1992 may have been that some kind of bill was likely, and that this was the best compromise to make.
Now, eighteen years later, he may feel it’s possible to avoid any kind of a bill.
He’s not a Republican, he doesn’t need to use his imagination nearly so often.
Whenever I hear this I cast my mind back a few years to when we were in the thick of the financial melt down. At that time the Dow Jones had lost half its value and people were wondering if we were headed into the next great depression. If I had a crystal ball back then and could look at our current situation, as dismal as it is, I would have been comforted to know that it wasn’t worse.
All of them? In each and every instance? Wow, then the question must be pretty much “cut and dried”, huh?
Yep. Hit the nail on the head.
I know you weren’t addressing me, but here you go.
The gist of the article is that, if Congress does nothing and lets the cuts expire, even though there would be short-term pain, we could have a surplus in less than a decade. If Congress continues to extend the tax cuts, we will continue to have a deficit.
Well, no, not all federal courts. Most federal courts have not been involved in the issue.
The largest lawsuit is the joint one with 26 states as parties to the suit, and the federal court that considered that one, in Florida, agreed that the mandate was unconstitutional.
Richmond and Michigan federal courts have ruled similarly.
A DC Circuit court found that the measure was constitutional.
But if you’re keeping score, the DC side isn’t winning.
And as an interesting addendum: I don’t agree with them. I think, as I have from the beginning, that the individual mandate and the entire bill are terrible public policy, but under Wickard I believe they are constitutional.
Social Security is the biggest piece of the federal budget but it is closely followed by the military (cite). Thing is Social Security in no way contributes to the federal deficit. Money going into and out of Social Security is not from the general taxes paid but rather special taxes explicitly paid into that part of the system.
So, the military is by far the single largest budget item.
Dole is just one example. The point is that the individual mandate was once acceptable amongst Republicans but it has become toxic and several Republicans have reversed their position for purely political “anything Obama wants must be evil” reasons.
Romney’s explanation sounds a lot like an excuse. I never understood the opposition to the individual mandate to be based on principles of federalism. I don’t think it will buy him absolution.
I understand the Republican party’s raction. They were looking at wandering for decades in the wilderness after how they handled things when they controlled the government for almsot a decade. So they took any port inn a storm but this notion taht Republicans are a party of principles is simply bullshit.
“I was the one who raised the issue about the job-killing employer mandate, and of course the unconstitutional employee mandate,” Hatch said. "
JOB KILLING AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL
I think the hope is that you will forget how bad things were and how bad things looked like they were going to get and pretend that things would have just worked out fine if we had done nothing and let the market sort itself out.
We were looking into the abyss. The bottom had fallen out of the global economy. Grain was rotting in the holds of ships because the financial system had seized up. We were a hop skip and a jump away from Mad Max World.
Republicans DEPEND on the big lie and noone uses it better than they do.
This is just insulting. I’m therefore not inclined to debate this with you any further.
Pretty much anything that touches on economic activity (or commerce) is constitutional under Wickard.
I also believe the bill is horrible public policy but only because it added all the cost elements of health care reform with none of the cost control. Universal ehalth care would have been better and I never believed for an instant that this was just the first step in anything, this horrible bill was going to be the FACE of health care reform.
Democrats need to grow some balls. I shoulda voted for Hillary.
For now. In 30 years it will be interest on the national debt and medicare assuming we don’t get involved in more unecessary wars.
Interesting. Thanks.
You don’t even need to invoke the Interstate Commerce Clause. The Constitution explicitly gives Congress the power to levy taxes for the common welfare. And that’s what they did.