Obamacare: Taxpayers Must Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS
When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form.
The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.
So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?
Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.
This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
READ ON: http://www.atr.org/obamacare-taxpayers-must-report-personal-health-a7611
Showing posts with label individual mandate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label individual mandate. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Monday, July 16, 2012
NULLIFY NOW !!
by Diane Rufino, July 13, 2012
There is a growing movement in my state of North Carolina, as well as other states, to Nullify the federal healthcare bill. The Supreme Court's disingenuous decision to uphold the Individual Mandate as a valid exercise of the Congress' taxing power has evidenced an unwillingness on any branch of the federal government to honor the sovereignty of the individual. The decision clearly puts our country on the dark path to government tyranny.
But there is no need to label me a fanatic or a right-wing alarmist. I only write about what I observe and what I know to be true. And I've been observing that Americans and state representatives all over the country are taking notice of the powerful State sovereignty doctrine known as Nullification. Although this doctrine is based on our founding principles, the term itself was not articulated until 1799 when Thomas Jefferson wrote a series of resolutions to address the unconstitutionality of the Alien & Sedition Act. Those resolutions, known as the Kentucky Resolves of 1799, state as follows:
"If those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by the federal compact (ie, the US Constitution), an annihilation of the state governments, and the creation, upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction, contended by the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism – since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers. That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a NULLIFICATION, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the RIGHTFUL REMEDY: That this commonwealth does, under the most deliberate reconsideration, declare that the said Alien and Sedition laws are, in their opinion, palpable violations of the Constitution....."
Jefferson believed it was up to the States, the parties who drafted and ratified the Constitution and thus created the federal government to stand up to the government when it exceeds constitutional bounds. The states, he wrote, have the unquestionable right to judge whether the government has usurped power from the states or the people (the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). He called Nullification the "Rightful Remedy" to keep the federal government constrained by the limited delegations of power granted by the states.
I know this a concept which is foreign to progressives and something that liberal universities prefer to keep hidden in historical record or teach as an outdated, racist doctrine, but the fact is that it is as vital and relevant as any of the other principles of government on which our system is based. It is an important check and balance and it is inherent in the system of Dual Sovereignty. The guarantees of the Declaration of Independence can only be protected if the government operates according to the Constitution's limitations.
Perhaps the reason this concept has been receiving so much attention is because it was articulated by our most revered Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson, the author of our charter of freedom and James Madison, the father of our Constitution (see the Virginia Resolves of 1798 and The Virginia General Assembly Report of 1800). It is an American remedy. Perhaps the reason it is criticized is because it's not found in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" playbook or in the Communist Manifesto. It doesn't further the concentration of government. Furthermore, Jefferson and Madison opposed slavery so it was not, as liberals allege, a racist doctrine.
And so, nullification groups have popped up all over the country. The topic is spreading like wildfire. Nullification groups are even organizing in North Carolina, a state which has spent years sucking up to the federal government. At the meeting the other night, one person asked whether certain provisions of the NC state constitution might present a legal barrier to members introducing nullification bills. Another asked whether it was a dangerous remedy and likely to escalate to secession. I'd like to spend the rest of this article addressing these concerns.
The provisions in the North Carolina state constitution that the gentleman was referring to are Article I, Section 4 ("Secession Prohibited") and Article I, Section 5 ("Allegiance to the United States). I don't believe either provision presents a barrier to Nullification.
Article I, Section 5 states: "Every citizen of this State owes paramount allegiance to the Constitution and government of the United States, and no law or ordinance of the State in contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force." This provision merely restates the theme of the Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, Section 2). State laws must not challenge the federal government in those areas it is expressly permitted by the Constitution to regulate.
Our federal system of government and the Tenth Amendment tell us that there is a purposeful tension between two sovereigns. With respect to the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, which are "few and defined" (James Madison, in Federalist No. 45), the government is sovereign and the states must yield their power. But as to all other powers and responsibilities, these are reserved to the states and thus they are sovereign. The federal government, therefore, must yield to the states. The tension has always been palpable and almost always, the federal courts have taken the federal government's side. But just because the trend seems to show that the federal government is taking power it was not originally granted, or delegated, by the states, it does not mean that Article I, Section 5 of the NC constitution is a carte blanche allegiance provision. It is to be observed responsibly, in accordance with the Supremacy Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and the original intent of the US Constitution. States are entitled to err on the side of their sovereignty. After all, they contemplated, drafted, debated, and eventually ratified the Constitution with specific designs for the Union. The federal government was THEIR creation.
Dr. Frankenstein and Igor created the monster; the monster didn't create them. The individual nations of the world joined created NATO and not the reverse.
Article I, Section 4 states: "This State shall ever remain a member of the American Union; the people thereof are part of the American nation; there is no right on the part of this State to secede; and all attempts, from whatever source or upon whatever pretext, to dissolve this Union or to sever this Nation, shall be resisted with the whole power of the State." This section is extremely offensive and is an insult to every North Carolinian who died in the Civil War believing in the sovereign right of self-determination and trying to preserve the notion that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence - "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Article I, Section 4 conflicts directly with the Declaration of Independence, as well as contradicts the very legal basis that underlies our government - the Compact Theory of the Union.
The Compact Theory was discussed even before the states ratified the Constitution. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote separately to propose that the Constitution be based on this principle. Under the Compact Theory of Federalism, the United States is made up of a voluntary union of States that agreed to a set of conditions on how they will be organized and governed. The Union was created by compact - or agreement (contract). They agreed to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states did not and could not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Under this theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements because they are the rightful parties who understand the terms and intent of the compact. The federal government was a CREATION of the compact and NOT a party to it. The compact theory states that our federal government was formed through an agreement by all of the states.
The Compact Theory is subject to the law of compact (or contract). And as with all contracts and agreements, the federal compact is limited by its language and by the intent when it was entered into. It is only legally enforceable under such conditions. In other words, the government is only legal for the specific purpose it was ratified for and under the precise terms (except for amendments properly adopted through the Article V amendment process).
Most states subscribe to this theory as the principle that underlies their bonds to the Union. Look at the articles of secession submitted by the southern states. For example, South Carolina explained:
"Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.” (the Supreme Court is not a neutral arbiter)
Also, just ask the state of Montana. In 2008, while it was waiting for the US Supreme Court to hand down its opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (second amendment case), the Montana State Legislature passed a resolution – H.J. 26 – asserting its state sovereignty and announcing that if the Supreme Court failed uphold the 2nd Amendment as an individual right to have and bear arms, then the state of Montana would consider it a fatal breach of the Compact and therefore it would nullify and void its bonds with fellow states. In other words, it threatened secession if the Supreme Court took away gun rights.
[Heller was the first time in seventy years that the Supreme Court heard a case regarding the central meaning of the Second Amendment and its relation to gun control laws. The District of Columbia passed legislation barring the registration of handguns, requiring licenses for all pistols, and mandating that all legal firearms must be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger locked. A group of private gun-owners brought suit claiming the laws violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The government claimed the 2nd Amendment only applies to militias, such as the National Guard, and is not an individual right. The federal district court in DC sided with the government and upheld the federal ban on private gun ownership. The Court of Appeals reversed. With four liberals on the Court who believed that the second amendment was only a collective right and Justice Anthony Kennedy as the justice who sits on the fence, the right to have and bear arms was precariously close to being destroyed, and the state of Montana was not willing to take it lightly].
In short, Article I, Section 4 condemns the state of North Carolina to be a federal cling-on rather than a sovereign state, comprised of sovereign individuals. We are not wards of the state, eternally and perpetually bound to their schemes and design of governance. The provision declares in the loudest of terms that the issue of state sovereignty was settled at Appomattox in 1865. I would be surprised to find many North Carolinians who believe that in their hearts. They are proud and patriotic.
There should be no concern that either provision of the North Carolina state constitution would bar any state representative from rightfully interposing the state between the helpless citizens and a power-hungry federal government.
The second question asked was whether nullification is risky and likely to escalate to secession. Ideally, the purpose of nullification is to address usurpations of power so that secession could be avoided. Of course, that requires that the federal government respect the state's right to invoke nullification and enforce their nullification bills.
In 1796, in response to the Quasi War with France, Congress passed the Alien & Sedition Acts to quash any false, misleading, scandalous, hateful, contemptuous, or defamatory communication concerning the government, the President (John Adams), or Congress (or individual members thereof). Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that it was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment's rights of free speech and press. The question became: What can be done to protect the people from an act of government that exceeds constitutional authority? (What can be done if the government violates the very Constitution which defines it?) Jefferson said there were three viable options: Judicial review, Nullification, and Secession. He didn't trust the courts to interpret the Constitution faithfully and thought secession was too extreme. He concluded that the "rightful remedy" was nullification. If successful, there would be no need for the extreme measure of secession.
John Calhoun, the famous Senator from South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, viewed nullification in the same way. Calhoun was a strong supporter of the doctrine and helped his state put forth an ordinance to nullify the federal tariffs ("Tariffs of Abomination"). The full title read: “An Ordinance to Nullify Certain Acts of Congress of the United States Purporting to be Laws Laying Duties and Imposts on the Importation of Foreign Commodities.” Although President Andrew Jackson believed South Carolina was heading towards secession, Calhoun assured that South Carolina was committed to the Union and did not want to secede. It just wanted the government to stop using its power to inflict such economic harm on the South.
In 1831, a year before the Nullification Crisis, Calhoun wrote: "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or a consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting ultimately on the solid basis of the sovereignty of the States or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, and violence, and force must finally prevail."
He continued:
"So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that they could not be fairly represented in a single government.. A plan was adopted best suited to our situation and perfectly novel in its character. The powers of government were divided, not, as heretofore, in reference to classes, but geographically. One General Government was formed for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the will of a majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of injustice and oppression.
It was thus that the interests of the whole were subjected, as they ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the peculiar and local interests were left under the control of the States separately, to whose custody only they could be safely confided. This distribution of power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character and excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically American, without example or parallel.
To realize its perfection, we must view the General Government and those of the States as a whole, each in its proper sphere independent; each perfectly adapted to its respective objects; the States acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar interests; and acting jointly through one General Government, with the weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution, representing and protecting the interest of the whole; and thus perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just. To preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of our Union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends. How is this to be effected?
The question is new, when applied to our peculiar political organization, where the separate and conflicting interests of society are represented by distinct but connected governments; but it is, in reality, an old question under a new form, long since perfectly solved. Whenever separate and dissimilar interests have been separately represented in any government; whenever the sovereign power has been divided in its exercise, the experience and wisdom of the ages have devised but one mode by which such political organization can be preserved,--the mode adopted in England, and by all governments, ancient and modern, blessed with constitutions deserving to be called free,--to give to each co-estate the right to judge of its powers, with a negative or veto on the acts of the others, in order to protect against encroachments the interests it particularly represents; a principle which all of our constitutions recognize in the distribution of power among their respective departments, as essential to maintain the independence of each; but which, to all who will duly reflect on the subject, must appear far more essential, for the same object, in that great and fundamental distribution of powers between the General and State Governments.
So essential is the principle, that, to withhold the right from either, where the sovereign power is divided, is, in fact, to annul the division itself, and to consolidate, in the one left in the exclusive possession of the right, all powers of government; for it is not possible to distinguish, practically, between a government having all power, and one having the right to take what powers in pleases. Nor does it in the least vary the principle, whether the distribution of power be between co-estates, as in England, or between distinctly organized but connected governments, as with us. The reason is the same in both cases, while the necessity is greater in our case, as the danger of conflict is greater where the interests of a society are divided geographically than in any other, as has already been shown.
The great and leading principle is, that the General Government emanated from the people of the several States, forming distinct political communities, and acting in their separate and sovereign capacity, and not from all of the people forming one aggregate political community; that the Constitution of the United States is, in fact, a compact, to which each State is a party, in the character already described; and that the several States, or parties, have a right to judge of its infractions; and in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of power not delegated, they have the right, in the last resort, to use the language of the Virginia Resolutions, 'to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.' This right of interposition, thus solemnly asserted by the State of Virginia, be it called what it may, -- State-right, veto, nullification, or by any other name, -- I conceive to be the fundamental principle of our system, resting on facts historically as certain as our revolution itself, and deductions as simple and demonstrative as that of any political or moral truth whatever; and I firmly believe that on its recognition depend the stability and safety of our political institutions.
With these strong feelings of attachment, I have examined, with the utmost care, the bearing of the doctrine in question; and, so far from anarchical or revolutionary, I solemnly believe it to be the only solid foundation of our system, and of the Union itself; and that the opposite doctrine, which denies to the States the right of protecting their reserved powers, and which would vest in the General Government (it matters not through what department) the right of determining, exclusively and finally, the powers delegated to it, is incompatible with the sovereignty of the States, and of the Constitution itself, considered as the basis of a Federal Union. As strong as this language is, it is not stronger than that used by the illustrious Jefferson, who said, to give to the General Government the final and exclusive right to judge of its powers, is to make 'its discretion and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers;' and that, 'in all cases of compact between parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infraction as of the mode and measure of redress.' Language cannot be more explicit, nor can higher authority be adduced."
He concluded by addressing the secession question:
"If the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission and oppression on one side, or resistance by force on the other. That our system should afford, in such extreme cases, an intermediate point between these dire alternatives, by which the Government may be brought to a pause, and thereby an interval obtained to compromise differences, or, if impracticable, be compelled to submit the question to a constitutional adjustment, through an appeal to the States themselves, is an evidence of its high wisdom: an element not, as is supposed by some, of weakness, but of strength; not of anarchy or revolution, but of peace and safety. Its general recognition would of itself, in a great measure, if not altogether, supersede the necessity of its exercise, by impressing on the movements of the Government that moderation and justice so essential to harmony and peace, in a country of such vast extent and diversity of interests as ours; and would, if controversy should come, turn the resentment of the aggrieved from the system to those who had abused its powers (a point all-important), and cause them to seek redress, not in revolution or overthrow, but in reformation. It is, in fact, properly understood, a substitute, -- where the alternative would be force, -- tending to prevent, and, if that fails, to correct peaceably the aberrations to which all systems are liable, and which, if permitted to accumulate without correction, must finally end in a general catastrophe."
We see, then, that nullification is not intended as a threat of possible secession. It is a peaceful plea to the federal government to faithfully honor the Constitution. So, if the government grows hostile to any state that uses nullification to declare an act of the government unconstitutional and that hostility leads to secession, then the fault of secession lies not with the state but with the government. The power to restore the design of the federal compact lies with the government. The power to prevent secession lies in the conduct of Washington DC.
No one wants the Union to dissolve. No one wants a state to be so frustrated and so apathetic and so rebellious with the federal government that its only effective solution is to dissolve its bonds with fellow states so that it is relieved of allegiance to an oppressive or controlling federal government. But if Americans are devoted to keeping the American ideal alive - that government serves the people and not the other way around - than secession must always be recognized as not only a fundamental sovereign right but also a viable option. It was certainly the option our founding patriots took when they adopted and signed the Declaration of Independence. That document, most clearly and straightforwardly, was a secessionist document. It announced "to a candid world" that the colonies endured a history of repeated injuries and usurpations at the hands of King George and were therefore dissolving their bonds with Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connections between them and the State of Great Britain, are and ought to be totally dissolved.."
Lincoln got it wrong. He engaged the South in a costly war to save the Union because he believed it was meant to be a perpetual Union. America was never promised to be a perpetual Union. It was promised to be the land of perpetual freedom. If the independent sovereign colonies had the right to be free and to dissolve their political bonds with a tyrannical government in 1776, why do they have any less of a right under the same circumstances?
Some have laughed at this sentiment. Many believe that the government would never allow any state to withdraw from the Union. Some look at the legal issues and wonder how a state can legally secede if no federal court will recognize the right of secession. [The only Supreme Court decision which addressed secession was Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), which was written by Justice Salmon Chase. Chase was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as a cabinet member and was a leading Union figure during the war against the South and so it was no surprise his decision was a regurgitation of Lincoln's premise for war. He wrote: "The act which consummated Texas' admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of all the States."]
Since the government enacted martial law in the South (thus treating the southern states as a conquered land) put strict conditions on the Confederate states for "re-admission to the Union," it is clear the government didn't even believe its own story.
The authority for secession comes from man's humanity and vests in every sovereign. The right of a people to abolish their government is a fundamental right, just as the rights to Life, Liberty, and Property are. As Jefferson said: "God who gave us life gave us liberty." Liberty is indivisible from life itself. This right of a people to abolish government is grounded in the inherent right of self-protection (individuals can protect their lives and property). When people are organized into communities and reside in a particular state, that state itself possesses the sovereign powers that the people themselves would have had if they had not delegated it for collective and mutual benefit. States do not need permission from the federal government to dissolve the political bonds binding them to the Union. They need no permission from fellow states (although they might wish some support). They certainly don't need permission from any of the federal courts.
The Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The US Constitution begins with the words "We the People." This is immensely significant because it evidences the understanding that the power of the government derives from the people. The power derives from the people because in this country we acknowledge that individuals are the true sovereigns. This concept mirrors the themes highlighted in Jefferson's Declaration. The Declaration is the WHY and the Constitution is the HOW.
This emphasis on "We the People" is quite different from what we've seen in history in other countries. Governments have been fashioned by Kings, established by tyrants, or forced on a conquering population. The rights of the people were always an after-though - a second thought. The interests of the King or the tyrant or the conqueror always came first. Governments were always top down until the US Constitution was written. In the United States, we have a bottom-up structure. Power bubbles up from the people. It transfers to a government which in turn serves them. It was not supposed to serve itself. The Constitution is a document that protects the individual from the conduct of government. It is a document used to enforce law on government - not on people. It is designed to limit government and not to limit citizens.
Our Founding Fathers came up with a special, unique formula, which it memorialized in the Constitution (and in the Federalist Papers) - that "limited government" equals "maximum individual liberty."
Governments established for the benefit of the individual are created by compact - an inherent agreement by the people to obey laws in return for the protection of their rights and the service of their liberty interests. After all, what is an individual's liberty interest in life and property worth if he can't leave his home in order to work and travel because he must protect his family and property from evil-intentioned individuals? Many governments are evidenced by a constitution, although it isn't necessary. Written instruments are preferred because they set out in particular detail the relationship between the People and government. Governments are supposed to be limited. While some laws are necessary to promote and even enlarge individual liberty, too many laws burden liberty and oppress people. The balance shifts. Instead of protecting and serving the People, it becomes their master. And then that is when we get to the point where the People review the situation and decide whether it is appropriate to form a different compact, or as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently stated: "to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It only makes sense that a nation founded on the sovereignty of the individual would allow individuals to abolish their government.
I certainly don't advocate secession. We lost almost 620,000 young men when the South seceded from the Union and Lincoln fought to deny them that opportunity. But as I wrote earlier, it has to be an option as a matter of last resort otherwise we slide down the path to tyranny without a way to salvage the liberty that our revolutionary patriots fought for and which our Founders secured for us.
It is said that nations typically follow a predictable path of progression: From bondage to spiritual faith; then from spiritual faith to great courage; then from courage to liberty; then from liberty to abundance; then from abundance to complacency; then from complacency to apathy; then from apathy to dependence; and finally, from dependence back into bondage. We are at the "dependency" stage. We think the federal government - all branches - are the answer. We see it every time we hear people make such outrageous claims as "home ownership" is a right and "healthcare is a right" and "entitlements are a right." Every time a people believes that government should give them something and therefore relieve them of the "opportunity" to provide such things for themselves, then they, in effect, hand those 'opportunities' back to the government. Each "opportunity" is indeed an exercise of Liberty. It is an opportunity to use the inherent rights and abilities granted to us by our Creator to achieve. We are squandering our opportunities by trusting government to take care of us.
We assume that the government - all branches - are the interpreters and final arbiters of what the Constitution means, what the government's powers are, what government should do, and what laws the people MUST obey. (A perfect example is the desire of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan to have a second amendment case reach the Supreme Court again after another liberal justice has been appointed to the Supreme Court so they can "get it right this time." District of Columbia v. Heller was a narrow 5-4 decision. These liberal justices believe strongly in government gun control - despite the overwhelming authority to the contrary - and Ginsberg has already gone public urging another case to come before the high court "after Obama wins a second term.")
If our early patriots understood the inherent violation of liberty rights in a relatively small tax on tea, is it no wonder that today's patriots are urging the revival of nullification over the blatant violation of liberty rights in the coercive federal healthcare bill? If our early patriots rebelled over the fact that they forcibly taxed to serve the purposes of others (the English), it is no wonder today's patriots are in an uproar over the fact that a certain segment of our population is being forcibly taxed to serve the purposes of others?
It is no wonder that critical mass has been reached and nullification is being talked about as the only option remaining to get government back in line. Hope for other options ended with the Supreme Court's decision of the healthcare bill. There would be no commonsense voice from the Supreme Court. There will be no repeal of the bill in this session or even the next. If Obama is re-elected, the republic is effectively dead. Nullification is the only answer. It provides the path from dependency back to liberty. It puts power back in the hands of the state and to the people. It is the rightful remedy for a people who rightfully deserve to enjoy freedom without oppressive and coercive policies of government.
Thomas Jefferson lives again in the hearts and minds of those who desperately want to save the republic. And it's great to have him back.
"My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. Land where my fathers died; land of the pilgrims' pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring."
References:
Diane Rufino, "Nullification: A Concept Whose Time Has Come" August 2011. Referenced at: http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
Diane Rufino, "Secession: Does a State Have the Right to Secede From the Union?" August 2011. Referenced at: http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). Referenced at: http://constitution.org/ussc/005-137a.htm
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 579 (2008).
John C. Calhoun, “Fort Hill Address: On the Relations of the States and the Federal Government,” in the book: Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lenace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992). Referenced at The Online Library of Liberty.: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=683&chapter=107120&layout=html&Itemid=27
There is a growing movement in my state of North Carolina, as well as other states, to Nullify the federal healthcare bill. The Supreme Court's disingenuous decision to uphold the Individual Mandate as a valid exercise of the Congress' taxing power has evidenced an unwillingness on any branch of the federal government to honor the sovereignty of the individual. The decision clearly puts our country on the dark path to government tyranny.
But there is no need to label me a fanatic or a right-wing alarmist. I only write about what I observe and what I know to be true. And I've been observing that Americans and state representatives all over the country are taking notice of the powerful State sovereignty doctrine known as Nullification. Although this doctrine is based on our founding principles, the term itself was not articulated until 1799 when Thomas Jefferson wrote a series of resolutions to address the unconstitutionality of the Alien & Sedition Act. Those resolutions, known as the Kentucky Resolves of 1799, state as follows:
"If those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by the federal compact (ie, the US Constitution), an annihilation of the state governments, and the creation, upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction, contended by the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism – since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers. That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a NULLIFICATION, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the RIGHTFUL REMEDY: That this commonwealth does, under the most deliberate reconsideration, declare that the said Alien and Sedition laws are, in their opinion, palpable violations of the Constitution....."
Jefferson believed it was up to the States, the parties who drafted and ratified the Constitution and thus created the federal government to stand up to the government when it exceeds constitutional bounds. The states, he wrote, have the unquestionable right to judge whether the government has usurped power from the states or the people (the Ninth and Tenth Amendments). He called Nullification the "Rightful Remedy" to keep the federal government constrained by the limited delegations of power granted by the states.
I know this a concept which is foreign to progressives and something that liberal universities prefer to keep hidden in historical record or teach as an outdated, racist doctrine, but the fact is that it is as vital and relevant as any of the other principles of government on which our system is based. It is an important check and balance and it is inherent in the system of Dual Sovereignty. The guarantees of the Declaration of Independence can only be protected if the government operates according to the Constitution's limitations.
Perhaps the reason this concept has been receiving so much attention is because it was articulated by our most revered Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson, the author of our charter of freedom and James Madison, the father of our Constitution (see the Virginia Resolves of 1798 and The Virginia General Assembly Report of 1800). It is an American remedy. Perhaps the reason it is criticized is because it's not found in the Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" playbook or in the Communist Manifesto. It doesn't further the concentration of government. Furthermore, Jefferson and Madison opposed slavery so it was not, as liberals allege, a racist doctrine.
And so, nullification groups have popped up all over the country. The topic is spreading like wildfire. Nullification groups are even organizing in North Carolina, a state which has spent years sucking up to the federal government. At the meeting the other night, one person asked whether certain provisions of the NC state constitution might present a legal barrier to members introducing nullification bills. Another asked whether it was a dangerous remedy and likely to escalate to secession. I'd like to spend the rest of this article addressing these concerns.
The provisions in the North Carolina state constitution that the gentleman was referring to are Article I, Section 4 ("Secession Prohibited") and Article I, Section 5 ("Allegiance to the United States). I don't believe either provision presents a barrier to Nullification.
Article I, Section 5 states: "Every citizen of this State owes paramount allegiance to the Constitution and government of the United States, and no law or ordinance of the State in contravention or subversion thereof can have any binding force." This provision merely restates the theme of the Supremacy Clause in the US Constitution (Article VI, Section 2). State laws must not challenge the federal government in those areas it is expressly permitted by the Constitution to regulate.
Our federal system of government and the Tenth Amendment tell us that there is a purposeful tension between two sovereigns. With respect to the powers delegated to the federal government in the Constitution, which are "few and defined" (James Madison, in Federalist No. 45), the government is sovereign and the states must yield their power. But as to all other powers and responsibilities, these are reserved to the states and thus they are sovereign. The federal government, therefore, must yield to the states. The tension has always been palpable and almost always, the federal courts have taken the federal government's side. But just because the trend seems to show that the federal government is taking power it was not originally granted, or delegated, by the states, it does not mean that Article I, Section 5 of the NC constitution is a carte blanche allegiance provision. It is to be observed responsibly, in accordance with the Supremacy Clause, the Tenth Amendment, and the original intent of the US Constitution. States are entitled to err on the side of their sovereignty. After all, they contemplated, drafted, debated, and eventually ratified the Constitution with specific designs for the Union. The federal government was THEIR creation.
Dr. Frankenstein and Igor created the monster; the monster didn't create them. The individual nations of the world joined created NATO and not the reverse.
Article I, Section 4 states: "This State shall ever remain a member of the American Union; the people thereof are part of the American nation; there is no right on the part of this State to secede; and all attempts, from whatever source or upon whatever pretext, to dissolve this Union or to sever this Nation, shall be resisted with the whole power of the State." This section is extremely offensive and is an insult to every North Carolinian who died in the Civil War believing in the sovereign right of self-determination and trying to preserve the notion that Jefferson wrote about in the Declaration of Independence - "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
Article I, Section 4 conflicts directly with the Declaration of Independence, as well as contradicts the very legal basis that underlies our government - the Compact Theory of the Union.
The Compact Theory was discussed even before the states ratified the Constitution. Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison wrote separately to propose that the Constitution be based on this principle. Under the Compact Theory of Federalism, the United States is made up of a voluntary union of States that agreed to a set of conditions on how they will be organized and governed. The Union was created by compact - or agreement (contract). They agreed to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states did not and could not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Under this theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements because they are the rightful parties who understand the terms and intent of the compact. The federal government was a CREATION of the compact and NOT a party to it. The compact theory states that our federal government was formed through an agreement by all of the states.
The Compact Theory is subject to the law of compact (or contract). And as with all contracts and agreements, the federal compact is limited by its language and by the intent when it was entered into. It is only legally enforceable under such conditions. In other words, the government is only legal for the specific purpose it was ratified for and under the precise terms (except for amendments properly adopted through the Article V amendment process).
Most states subscribe to this theory as the principle that underlies their bonds to the Union. Look at the articles of secession submitted by the southern states. For example, South Carolina explained:
"Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.” (the Supreme Court is not a neutral arbiter)
Also, just ask the state of Montana. In 2008, while it was waiting for the US Supreme Court to hand down its opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (second amendment case), the Montana State Legislature passed a resolution – H.J. 26 – asserting its state sovereignty and announcing that if the Supreme Court failed uphold the 2nd Amendment as an individual right to have and bear arms, then the state of Montana would consider it a fatal breach of the Compact and therefore it would nullify and void its bonds with fellow states. In other words, it threatened secession if the Supreme Court took away gun rights.
[Heller was the first time in seventy years that the Supreme Court heard a case regarding the central meaning of the Second Amendment and its relation to gun control laws. The District of Columbia passed legislation barring the registration of handguns, requiring licenses for all pistols, and mandating that all legal firearms must be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger locked. A group of private gun-owners brought suit claiming the laws violated their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The government claimed the 2nd Amendment only applies to militias, such as the National Guard, and is not an individual right. The federal district court in DC sided with the government and upheld the federal ban on private gun ownership. The Court of Appeals reversed. With four liberals on the Court who believed that the second amendment was only a collective right and Justice Anthony Kennedy as the justice who sits on the fence, the right to have and bear arms was precariously close to being destroyed, and the state of Montana was not willing to take it lightly].
In short, Article I, Section 4 condemns the state of North Carolina to be a federal cling-on rather than a sovereign state, comprised of sovereign individuals. We are not wards of the state, eternally and perpetually bound to their schemes and design of governance. The provision declares in the loudest of terms that the issue of state sovereignty was settled at Appomattox in 1865. I would be surprised to find many North Carolinians who believe that in their hearts. They are proud and patriotic.
There should be no concern that either provision of the North Carolina state constitution would bar any state representative from rightfully interposing the state between the helpless citizens and a power-hungry federal government.
The second question asked was whether nullification is risky and likely to escalate to secession. Ideally, the purpose of nullification is to address usurpations of power so that secession could be avoided. Of course, that requires that the federal government respect the state's right to invoke nullification and enforce their nullification bills.
In 1796, in response to the Quasi War with France, Congress passed the Alien & Sedition Acts to quash any false, misleading, scandalous, hateful, contemptuous, or defamatory communication concerning the government, the President (John Adams), or Congress (or individual members thereof). Thomas Jefferson proclaimed that it was unconstitutional and violated the First Amendment's rights of free speech and press. The question became: What can be done to protect the people from an act of government that exceeds constitutional authority? (What can be done if the government violates the very Constitution which defines it?) Jefferson said there were three viable options: Judicial review, Nullification, and Secession. He didn't trust the courts to interpret the Constitution faithfully and thought secession was too extreme. He concluded that the "rightful remedy" was nullification. If successful, there would be no need for the extreme measure of secession.
John Calhoun, the famous Senator from South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis of 1832, viewed nullification in the same way. Calhoun was a strong supporter of the doctrine and helped his state put forth an ordinance to nullify the federal tariffs ("Tariffs of Abomination"). The full title read: “An Ordinance to Nullify Certain Acts of Congress of the United States Purporting to be Laws Laying Duties and Imposts on the Importation of Foreign Commodities.” Although President Andrew Jackson believed South Carolina was heading towards secession, Calhoun assured that South Carolina was committed to the Union and did not want to secede. It just wanted the government to stop using its power to inflict such economic harm on the South.
In 1831, a year before the Nullification Crisis, Calhoun wrote: "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or a consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting ultimately on the solid basis of the sovereignty of the States or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, and violence, and force must finally prevail."
He continued:
"So numerous and diversified are the interests of our country, that they could not be fairly represented in a single government.. A plan was adopted best suited to our situation and perfectly novel in its character. The powers of government were divided, not, as heretofore, in reference to classes, but geographically. One General Government was formed for the whole, to which were delegated all the powers supposed to be necessary to regulate the interests common to all the States, leaving others subject to the separate control of the States, being, from their local and peculiar character, such that they could not be subject to the will of a majority of the whole Union, without the certain hazard of injustice and oppression.
It was thus that the interests of the whole were subjected, as they ought to be, to the will of the whole, while the peculiar and local interests were left under the control of the States separately, to whose custody only they could be safely confided. This distribution of power, settled solemnly by a constitutional compact, to which all the States are parties, constitutes the peculiar character and excellence of our political system. It is truly and emphatically American, without example or parallel.
To realize its perfection, we must view the General Government and those of the States as a whole, each in its proper sphere independent; each perfectly adapted to its respective objects; the States acting separately, representing and protecting the local and peculiar interests; and acting jointly through one General Government, with the weight respectively assigned to each by the Constitution, representing and protecting the interest of the whole; and thus perfecting, by an admirable but simple arrangement, the great principle of representation and responsibility, without which no government can be free or just. To preserve this sacred distribution as originally settled, by coercing each to move in its prescribed orbit, is the great and difficult problem, on the solution of which the duration of our Constitution, of our Union, and, in all probability, our liberty depends. How is this to be effected?
The question is new, when applied to our peculiar political organization, where the separate and conflicting interests of society are represented by distinct but connected governments; but it is, in reality, an old question under a new form, long since perfectly solved. Whenever separate and dissimilar interests have been separately represented in any government; whenever the sovereign power has been divided in its exercise, the experience and wisdom of the ages have devised but one mode by which such political organization can be preserved,--the mode adopted in England, and by all governments, ancient and modern, blessed with constitutions deserving to be called free,--to give to each co-estate the right to judge of its powers, with a negative or veto on the acts of the others, in order to protect against encroachments the interests it particularly represents; a principle which all of our constitutions recognize in the distribution of power among their respective departments, as essential to maintain the independence of each; but which, to all who will duly reflect on the subject, must appear far more essential, for the same object, in that great and fundamental distribution of powers between the General and State Governments.
So essential is the principle, that, to withhold the right from either, where the sovereign power is divided, is, in fact, to annul the division itself, and to consolidate, in the one left in the exclusive possession of the right, all powers of government; for it is not possible to distinguish, practically, between a government having all power, and one having the right to take what powers in pleases. Nor does it in the least vary the principle, whether the distribution of power be between co-estates, as in England, or between distinctly organized but connected governments, as with us. The reason is the same in both cases, while the necessity is greater in our case, as the danger of conflict is greater where the interests of a society are divided geographically than in any other, as has already been shown.
The great and leading principle is, that the General Government emanated from the people of the several States, forming distinct political communities, and acting in their separate and sovereign capacity, and not from all of the people forming one aggregate political community; that the Constitution of the United States is, in fact, a compact, to which each State is a party, in the character already described; and that the several States, or parties, have a right to judge of its infractions; and in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of power not delegated, they have the right, in the last resort, to use the language of the Virginia Resolutions, 'to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.' This right of interposition, thus solemnly asserted by the State of Virginia, be it called what it may, -- State-right, veto, nullification, or by any other name, -- I conceive to be the fundamental principle of our system, resting on facts historically as certain as our revolution itself, and deductions as simple and demonstrative as that of any political or moral truth whatever; and I firmly believe that on its recognition depend the stability and safety of our political institutions.
With these strong feelings of attachment, I have examined, with the utmost care, the bearing of the doctrine in question; and, so far from anarchical or revolutionary, I solemnly believe it to be the only solid foundation of our system, and of the Union itself; and that the opposite doctrine, which denies to the States the right of protecting their reserved powers, and which would vest in the General Government (it matters not through what department) the right of determining, exclusively and finally, the powers delegated to it, is incompatible with the sovereignty of the States, and of the Constitution itself, considered as the basis of a Federal Union. As strong as this language is, it is not stronger than that used by the illustrious Jefferson, who said, to give to the General Government the final and exclusive right to judge of its powers, is to make 'its discretion and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers;' and that, 'in all cases of compact between parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of the infraction as of the mode and measure of redress.' Language cannot be more explicit, nor can higher authority be adduced."
He concluded by addressing the secession question:
"If the right to interpose did not exist, the alternative would be submission and oppression on one side, or resistance by force on the other. That our system should afford, in such extreme cases, an intermediate point between these dire alternatives, by which the Government may be brought to a pause, and thereby an interval obtained to compromise differences, or, if impracticable, be compelled to submit the question to a constitutional adjustment, through an appeal to the States themselves, is an evidence of its high wisdom: an element not, as is supposed by some, of weakness, but of strength; not of anarchy or revolution, but of peace and safety. Its general recognition would of itself, in a great measure, if not altogether, supersede the necessity of its exercise, by impressing on the movements of the Government that moderation and justice so essential to harmony and peace, in a country of such vast extent and diversity of interests as ours; and would, if controversy should come, turn the resentment of the aggrieved from the system to those who had abused its powers (a point all-important), and cause them to seek redress, not in revolution or overthrow, but in reformation. It is, in fact, properly understood, a substitute, -- where the alternative would be force, -- tending to prevent, and, if that fails, to correct peaceably the aberrations to which all systems are liable, and which, if permitted to accumulate without correction, must finally end in a general catastrophe."
We see, then, that nullification is not intended as a threat of possible secession. It is a peaceful plea to the federal government to faithfully honor the Constitution. So, if the government grows hostile to any state that uses nullification to declare an act of the government unconstitutional and that hostility leads to secession, then the fault of secession lies not with the state but with the government. The power to restore the design of the federal compact lies with the government. The power to prevent secession lies in the conduct of Washington DC.
No one wants the Union to dissolve. No one wants a state to be so frustrated and so apathetic and so rebellious with the federal government that its only effective solution is to dissolve its bonds with fellow states so that it is relieved of allegiance to an oppressive or controlling federal government. But if Americans are devoted to keeping the American ideal alive - that government serves the people and not the other way around - than secession must always be recognized as not only a fundamental sovereign right but also a viable option. It was certainly the option our founding patriots took when they adopted and signed the Declaration of Independence. That document, most clearly and straightforwardly, was a secessionist document. It announced "to a candid world" that the colonies endured a history of repeated injuries and usurpations at the hands of King George and were therefore dissolving their bonds with Great Britain. Thomas Jefferson wrote: "That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connections between them and the State of Great Britain, are and ought to be totally dissolved.."
Lincoln got it wrong. He engaged the South in a costly war to save the Union because he believed it was meant to be a perpetual Union. America was never promised to be a perpetual Union. It was promised to be the land of perpetual freedom. If the independent sovereign colonies had the right to be free and to dissolve their political bonds with a tyrannical government in 1776, why do they have any less of a right under the same circumstances?
Some have laughed at this sentiment. Many believe that the government would never allow any state to withdraw from the Union. Some look at the legal issues and wonder how a state can legally secede if no federal court will recognize the right of secession. [The only Supreme Court decision which addressed secession was Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), which was written by Justice Salmon Chase. Chase was appointed by Abraham Lincoln as a cabinet member and was a leading Union figure during the war against the South and so it was no surprise his decision was a regurgitation of Lincoln's premise for war. He wrote: "The act which consummated Texas' admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of all the States."]
Since the government enacted martial law in the South (thus treating the southern states as a conquered land) put strict conditions on the Confederate states for "re-admission to the Union," it is clear the government didn't even believe its own story.
The authority for secession comes from man's humanity and vests in every sovereign. The right of a people to abolish their government is a fundamental right, just as the rights to Life, Liberty, and Property are. As Jefferson said: "God who gave us life gave us liberty." Liberty is indivisible from life itself. This right of a people to abolish government is grounded in the inherent right of self-protection (individuals can protect their lives and property). When people are organized into communities and reside in a particular state, that state itself possesses the sovereign powers that the people themselves would have had if they had not delegated it for collective and mutual benefit. States do not need permission from the federal government to dissolve the political bonds binding them to the Union. They need no permission from fellow states (although they might wish some support). They certainly don't need permission from any of the federal courts.
The Declaration of Independence reads: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
The US Constitution begins with the words "We the People." This is immensely significant because it evidences the understanding that the power of the government derives from the people. The power derives from the people because in this country we acknowledge that individuals are the true sovereigns. This concept mirrors the themes highlighted in Jefferson's Declaration. The Declaration is the WHY and the Constitution is the HOW.
This emphasis on "We the People" is quite different from what we've seen in history in other countries. Governments have been fashioned by Kings, established by tyrants, or forced on a conquering population. The rights of the people were always an after-though - a second thought. The interests of the King or the tyrant or the conqueror always came first. Governments were always top down until the US Constitution was written. In the United States, we have a bottom-up structure. Power bubbles up from the people. It transfers to a government which in turn serves them. It was not supposed to serve itself. The Constitution is a document that protects the individual from the conduct of government. It is a document used to enforce law on government - not on people. It is designed to limit government and not to limit citizens.
Our Founding Fathers came up with a special, unique formula, which it memorialized in the Constitution (and in the Federalist Papers) - that "limited government" equals "maximum individual liberty."
Governments established for the benefit of the individual are created by compact - an inherent agreement by the people to obey laws in return for the protection of their rights and the service of their liberty interests. After all, what is an individual's liberty interest in life and property worth if he can't leave his home in order to work and travel because he must protect his family and property from evil-intentioned individuals? Many governments are evidenced by a constitution, although it isn't necessary. Written instruments are preferred because they set out in particular detail the relationship between the People and government. Governments are supposed to be limited. While some laws are necessary to promote and even enlarge individual liberty, too many laws burden liberty and oppress people. The balance shifts. Instead of protecting and serving the People, it becomes their master. And then that is when we get to the point where the People review the situation and decide whether it is appropriate to form a different compact, or as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently stated: "to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
It only makes sense that a nation founded on the sovereignty of the individual would allow individuals to abolish their government.
I certainly don't advocate secession. We lost almost 620,000 young men when the South seceded from the Union and Lincoln fought to deny them that opportunity. But as I wrote earlier, it has to be an option as a matter of last resort otherwise we slide down the path to tyranny without a way to salvage the liberty that our revolutionary patriots fought for and which our Founders secured for us.
It is said that nations typically follow a predictable path of progression: From bondage to spiritual faith; then from spiritual faith to great courage; then from courage to liberty; then from liberty to abundance; then from abundance to complacency; then from complacency to apathy; then from apathy to dependence; and finally, from dependence back into bondage. We are at the "dependency" stage. We think the federal government - all branches - are the answer. We see it every time we hear people make such outrageous claims as "home ownership" is a right and "healthcare is a right" and "entitlements are a right." Every time a people believes that government should give them something and therefore relieve them of the "opportunity" to provide such things for themselves, then they, in effect, hand those 'opportunities' back to the government. Each "opportunity" is indeed an exercise of Liberty. It is an opportunity to use the inherent rights and abilities granted to us by our Creator to achieve. We are squandering our opportunities by trusting government to take care of us.
We assume that the government - all branches - are the interpreters and final arbiters of what the Constitution means, what the government's powers are, what government should do, and what laws the people MUST obey. (A perfect example is the desire of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan to have a second amendment case reach the Supreme Court again after another liberal justice has been appointed to the Supreme Court so they can "get it right this time." District of Columbia v. Heller was a narrow 5-4 decision. These liberal justices believe strongly in government gun control - despite the overwhelming authority to the contrary - and Ginsberg has already gone public urging another case to come before the high court "after Obama wins a second term.")
If our early patriots understood the inherent violation of liberty rights in a relatively small tax on tea, is it no wonder that today's patriots are urging the revival of nullification over the blatant violation of liberty rights in the coercive federal healthcare bill? If our early patriots rebelled over the fact that they forcibly taxed to serve the purposes of others (the English), it is no wonder today's patriots are in an uproar over the fact that a certain segment of our population is being forcibly taxed to serve the purposes of others?
It is no wonder that critical mass has been reached and nullification is being talked about as the only option remaining to get government back in line. Hope for other options ended with the Supreme Court's decision of the healthcare bill. There would be no commonsense voice from the Supreme Court. There will be no repeal of the bill in this session or even the next. If Obama is re-elected, the republic is effectively dead. Nullification is the only answer. It provides the path from dependency back to liberty. It puts power back in the hands of the state and to the people. It is the rightful remedy for a people who rightfully deserve to enjoy freedom without oppressive and coercive policies of government.
Thomas Jefferson lives again in the hearts and minds of those who desperately want to save the republic. And it's great to have him back.
"My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty. Land where my fathers died; land of the pilgrims' pride. From every mountainside, let freedom ring."
References:
Diane Rufino, "Nullification: A Concept Whose Time Has Come" August 2011. Referenced at: http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
Diane Rufino, "Secession: Does a State Have the Right to Secede From the Union?" August 2011. Referenced at: http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com/
Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803). Referenced at: http://constitution.org/ussc/005-137a.htm
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 579 (2008).
John C. Calhoun, “Fort Hill Address: On the Relations of the States and the Federal Government,” in the book: Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, ed. Ross M. Lenace (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1992). Referenced at The Online Library of Liberty.: http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=683&chapter=107120&layout=html&Itemid=27
Friday, July 6, 2012
Obamacare: How Many of the President’s Promises Have Been Broken?
Yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) almost called Obamacare’s individual mandate a tax, stopping mid-word to call it a “penalty”. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and other spokespersons echoed this talking point. This is in spite of last week’s Supreme Court ruling that deemed the mandate unconstitutional under both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but ruled that it could stand as part of Congress’s authority to “lay and collect taxes.”
Dubbing the individual mandate a tax saved the President’s health care law, but it’s a concept that President Obama himself has strongly denied. In a 2009 interview, President Obama argued that his individual mandate was not a tax increase, stating, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
But after last week, President Obama must now admit it’s a tax or admit the mandate is unconstitutional. It’s can only be one or the other.
The mandate is in fact a tax, and it’s just one of many new taxes that hit the middle class in Obamacare. Lo and behold, another broken promise. President Obama claims that the mandate is holding people responsible, keeping with that spirit, here’s a reminder of the other promises the President and his health care law are responsible for breaking:
Promise #1: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”
Reality: The individual mandate is far from alone on Heritage’s lengthy list of Obamacare’s new taxes and penalties, many of which will heavily impact the middle class. Altogether, Obamacare’s taxes and penalties will accumulate an additional $500 billion in new revenue over a 10-year period. Yesterday, a senior economist for The Wall Street Journal revealed that 75 percent of Obamacare’s new taxes will be paid for by American families making under $120,000 a year. Among the taxes that will hit the middle class are the individual mandate, a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning, and an increase of the floor on medical deductions from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent.
Promise #2: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Reality: Research continues to show that as many as 30 percent of employers will dump their employees from their existing health care coverage. The Administration itself has admitted that “as a practical matter, a majority of group health plans will lose their grandfather status by 2013.”
Promise #3: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.”
Reality: As Heritage analysts explain, “A close examination of what [the Congressional Budget Office] said, as well as other evidence, makes it clear that the deficit reduction associated with [Obamacare] is based on budget gimmicks, sleights of hand, accounting tricks, and completely implausible assumptions. A more honest accounting reveals the new law as a trillion-dollar budget buster.”
Promise #4: “I will protect Medicare.”
Reality: A Heritage Factsheet shows the various ways Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it, including severe physician reimbursement cuts that threaten seniors’ access to care and putting an unelected board of bureaucrats in charge of meeting Medicare’s new spending cap.
CONTINUED: http://www.askheritage.org/obamacare-how-many-of-the-presidents-promises-have-been-broken-t3?utm_content=2012-07-06&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=AH_Weekly&utm_campaign=2012_Brand&mboxSession=1341614914343-598254
Dubbing the individual mandate a tax saved the President’s health care law, but it’s a concept that President Obama himself has strongly denied. In a 2009 interview, President Obama argued that his individual mandate was not a tax increase, stating, “I absolutely reject that notion.”
But after last week, President Obama must now admit it’s a tax or admit the mandate is unconstitutional. It’s can only be one or the other.
The mandate is in fact a tax, and it’s just one of many new taxes that hit the middle class in Obamacare. Lo and behold, another broken promise. President Obama claims that the mandate is holding people responsible, keeping with that spirit, here’s a reminder of the other promises the President and his health care law are responsible for breaking:
Promise #1: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”
Reality: The individual mandate is far from alone on Heritage’s lengthy list of Obamacare’s new taxes and penalties, many of which will heavily impact the middle class. Altogether, Obamacare’s taxes and penalties will accumulate an additional $500 billion in new revenue over a 10-year period. Yesterday, a senior economist for The Wall Street Journal revealed that 75 percent of Obamacare’s new taxes will be paid for by American families making under $120,000 a year. Among the taxes that will hit the middle class are the individual mandate, a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning, and an increase of the floor on medical deductions from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent.
Promise #2: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”
Reality: Research continues to show that as many as 30 percent of employers will dump their employees from their existing health care coverage. The Administration itself has admitted that “as a practical matter, a majority of group health plans will lose their grandfather status by 2013.”
Promise #3: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.”
Reality: As Heritage analysts explain, “A close examination of what [the Congressional Budget Office] said, as well as other evidence, makes it clear that the deficit reduction associated with [Obamacare] is based on budget gimmicks, sleights of hand, accounting tricks, and completely implausible assumptions. A more honest accounting reveals the new law as a trillion-dollar budget buster.”
Promise #4: “I will protect Medicare.”
Reality: A Heritage Factsheet shows the various ways Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it, including severe physician reimbursement cuts that threaten seniors’ access to care and putting an unelected board of bureaucrats in charge of meeting Medicare’s new spending cap.
CONTINUED: http://www.askheritage.org/obamacare-how-many-of-the-presidents-promises-have-been-broken-t3?utm_content=2012-07-06&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=AH_Weekly&utm_campaign=2012_Brand&mboxSession=1341614914343-598254
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
And Now the Wait Begins ...... Obamacare and the Supreme Court
by Diane Rufino, March 28, 2012
http://forloveofgodandcountry.wordpress.com
On Monday, March 26, the Supreme Court began oral arguments in the highly-anticipated case challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. By Wednesday afternoon, the hearings had concluded. The historic arguments consolidated an appeal from 26 states, a group representing several small businesses, and several individuals who contend that the 2010 health care law, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, is unconstitutional.
Perhaps significantly, Justice Kennedy, the Court's notorious swing vote, appeared to be very concerned about the status of young people with respect to the healthcare bill. He noted that the government hasn't exactly been honest about its intentions with the bill, which was to offset the burden that uninsured individuals place on healthcare.
If the administration was really interested in preventing young people (many who are uninsured) from being such a burden, the healthcare plan would allow them to buy only catastrophic health insurance (instead of the plan that includes well visits, preventative care). Catastrophic health insurance is all that 20-30 year-olds really need; It's the only product that makes any economic sense for them. But Obamacare doesn't allow that. So, as Kennedy emphasized, we see what the healthcare bill is really all about. It's about using 20-30 year-olds to subsidize the plan, to subsidize insurance for those who can't afford it. It's about using young healthy people to fund the program. It's about a social scheme.
As we all know, the government's plan is to subsidize health insurance for everyone, especially those who are uninsured and sick (approximately 20% of all uninsured). The plan forces insurance companies to cover the sick. But it doesn't want to use the typical means to pay for this - such as tax subsidies. Instead, the government wants to reach OUTSIDE the market and COMPEL a whole bunch of healthy people into that market so they can be used to subsidize the program and help bring healthcare premiums down. In fact, this was the finding by Congress: that bringing young healthy people into the market will bring down the health insurance premium by about 15% for everyone. Unfortunately, though, it will force them to buy something they don't need or want.
The healthcare challenge, on its face, is about the Individual Mandate - the government's belief that it has the power under the Commerce Clause to force Americans to purchase the specific health insurance it dictates, even those who don't need it. It is also about the fundamental scheme in place, established by our Founders and memorialized with the Tenth Amendment, that the federal government is a government of limited powers with the bulk of powers being reserved to the States where they can most effectively regulate for the health, safety, welfare, and morality of their people. It is about the section of the bill which enlarges the Medicaid program and coerces the States to participate in its healthcare scheme by threatening to withhold all Medicaid funding should they decide not to. According to the states, the sheer volume of the federal funding at stake leaves them with no practical capacity to withdraw from Medicaid. By placing all of a state’s federal Medicaid dollars at risk for the failure to adhere to the healthcare bill’s conditions, they claim the Act also amounts to compulsion. And furthermore, they claim that conditions imposed on state governments to implement the scheme constitutes impermissible commandeering of the states and their resources.
But the underlying issue is individual liberty. It is about the right of an individual to be free from government compulsion - not being forced to do something against one's will or spending one's money (that is, what remains after the government takes its cut in the form of income taxes) on things one don't want or need. It's the fundamental right to conduct one's life the way he or she feels fit and to make his or her own personal decisions. It's the basic right "to be left alone" by government.
And the decision, therefore, will speak volumes about how strongly our nation's highest court is committed to this grand notion of individual liberty. We already know that there are several justices who believe in an expansive view of government and use the court to evolve its responsibilities. And there are those justices who believe in the strict interpretation of the Constitution and in limits to federal power. And then there is Justice Kennedy, who can be defined by neither classification. His opinion may turn out to be the deciding factor in this case.
All eyes are usually on Justice Kennedy, the genial justice who sits on the fence, often keeping interested parties nervous as to which side he will side with - the liberal bloc (Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) or the conservative bloc (Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the Chief Justice John Roberts). Kennedy was appointed to the bench in 1988 by President Reagan, after the Senate failed to confirm his first choice, committed originalist Robert Bork. Reagan also appointed Justice Scalia. At the time of his appointment, he was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, appointed by President Gerald R. Ford. The Ninth Circuit is known as the most liberal of the circuit courts, and in fact, tried to remove the words "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Kennedy's crucial swing vote has often been the decisive factor in many of our most important and controversial cases of recent years.
• Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000; upholding the Boy Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from being scoutmasters. He joined the conservative justices in this decision)
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003; finding the right of homosexual men to engage in sodomy in the privacy of their home thereby overturning an earlier Supreme Court decision which banned the practice. He joined the liberal justices on this decision)
• Kelo v. City of New London (2005; holding that local government has the power to take private property for economic development through the use of eminent domain. He joined the liberal justices in this decision)
• United States v. Lopez (2005: holding that possession of a gun in a local school zone is not an economic activity that might, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce because the conduct at issue has nothing to do with "commerce." He joined the conservative justices in this decision)
• Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008; holding that the 8th Amendment bars Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the heinous rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death, although the injuries were so extensive, doctors don't know how she survived. Kennedy joined the liberal justices on this decision)
• Boumediene v. Bush (2008; a case challenging the legality of Boumediene’s detention at Guantanamo Bay. Kennedy sided with the four liberal justices in finding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus applies to persons held in Guantanamo Bay and to persons designated as enemy combatants on that territory)
• District of Columbia v. Heller (2008; holding that the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms; All four of the liberal justices believe it only applies to state militias and therefore prevents individuals from having the right to possess guns in their homes)
• McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010; holding that Heller applies to the States through the 14th Amendment. holding that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense applicable to the states. Kennedy sided with the conservative justices in asserting that these rights are "fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty" and are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" and hence are appropriately applied to the states through the 14th Amendment)
• Brown v. Plata (2011; holding that releasing violent criminals from an over-crowded prison is a proper remedy to address the violation of prisoners' 8th Amendment guarantee against 'cruel and unusual punishment' caused by long wait times to see prison doctors and less-than-ideal medical accommodations)
In the 2008–2009 term, there were 16 decisions in which the justices split strictly along ideological lines. Kennedy joined the conservative members of the Court eleven times and the liberals only five.
And so, all eyes were on Justice Kennedy in the case against the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and all ears were open to his questions and comments, in the hopes of providing a glimpse into his mindset regarding the administration's huge power grab under the Act.
On the first day of hearings, the justices had to entertain whether the healthcare challenge is even allowable under the Anti Injunction Act (AIA), a federal tax law that says, in essence, that a taxpayer cannot challenge a tax until it comes into effect. The provision at issue is the penalty portion of the Act, which requires that almost every individual purchase health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The questions before the Court were twofold: (1) Can the penalty be classified as a "tax" and therefore implicate the AIA? And (2) If so, is it then premature for the court to consider the present challenge to the individual mandate?
Justice Breyer asked point blank: "Where I see the problem is in the part of the AIA which refers to the 'assessment or collection of any tax.' Now, Congress has nowhere used the word 'tax.' What it says is 'penalty.' Moreover, this is not in the Internal Revenue Code 'but for purposes of collection.' And so why is this a tax?" He further emphasized that lawmakers intentionally did not use the term when they crafted the legislation nor did they intend the penalty as a tax.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another liberal member of the Court, also expressed skepticism. "This is not a revenue-raising measure because, if it's successful, nobody will pay the penalty and therefore there will be no revenue to raise."
Judging on the arguments and discussion made the first day, it seems likely the case will be decided and not postponed. Even the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli urged the justices to decide the merits of the dispute. "This case presents issues of great moment," he said.
On the second day of hearings Verrilli faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices, including Justice Kennedy. The questions posed to him went straight to the central issue in the case and that is whether the federal government can compel individuals not engaged in commerce to buy a product - health insurance - and hence become part of that commerce in order to be regulated. “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” Justice Kennedy asked. That was his very first question of the day. He later told Mr. Verrilli that the federal government faced “a heavy burden of justification” for the Individual Mandate and pressed him to articulate “some limits on the Commerce Clause."
The court focused on whether the mandate for Americans to have insurance "amounts to an affirmative duty to engage in commerce" and is therefore "an unprecedented step beyond what our cases allow," which is how Justice Kennedy phrased the issue. He then told Verrilli: "With this law, you are changing the relationship of the individual to the government.”
Chief Justice Roberts asked: "So, can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? That way, you can just dial 911 no matter where you are?" Verrilli tried to argue that Roberts' scenario was distinguishable from the health care market. But Roberts fired back: "It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical. You don't know when you're going to need police assistance. You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need. But when you do, and the government provides it. I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it. Well, when you need police assistance or fire assistance or ambulance assistance, the government is going to make sure to the best of its ability that you get it."
Justice Alito asked Solicitor General Verrilli: "Do you think there is a, a market for burial services?" He answered in the affirmative. Alito then continued: "All right, suppose that you and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour and we found a couple of healthy young people and we stopped them and we said, "You know what you're doing? You are financing your burial services right now because eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're going to shift the cost to somebody else. Isn't that a very artificial way of talking about what somebody is doing?" Verrilli didn't agree. But Alito pushed further: "And if that's true, why isn't it equally artificial to say that somebody who is doing absolutely nothing about health care is financing health care services? See, I don't see the difference. You can get burial insurance. You can get health insurance. Most people are going to need health care. Almost everybody. Everybody is going to be buried or cremated at some point. What's the difference? If you don't have money then someone has to pay... Whether the State or a family member. And isn't that what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in — in 2016. The administration estimates that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the act wishes to serve, but if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else." Verrilli acknowledged that this was in fact the case.
Chief Justice Roberts commented: "It's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve - must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment, substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase. Your theory is that there is a market in which everyone participates because everybody might need a certain range of health care services, and yet you're requiring people who are never going to need pediatric or maternity services to participate in that market."
He then asked: "If the government can force people to buy health insurance can it require people to buy certain types of cars? Broccoli?" Justice Scalia hinted that if everyone were forced to buy a new car, it might help lower the costs of new cars for everyone.
Scalia offered his interpretation of the government's case: "I don't agree with you that the relevant market here is health care. You're not regulating health care. You're regulating insurance. It's the insurance market that you're addressing and you're saying that some people who are not in it must be in it. That approach is different from the regulation of any type of commerce that already exists out there."
Solicitor General Verrilli tried to paraphrase the government's position: "Our position is that it's not an illegitimate exercise of the commerce power for some people to subsidize others. You're young and healthy one day, but you don't stay that way. And the system works over time."
Justice Scalia spoke up: "We're not stupid. They're going to buy insurance later. They're young and need the money now. When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they'll buy insurance, like the rest of us. You seem to suggest that they are never going to buy it. You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not require them to sell it to him at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don't want to do that. And to me, that seems like a problem created by the government - a self-created problem."
Chief Justice Roberts added: "You say your argument is limited to health insurance But once you establish that you have a market for health care, would you suppose Congress's power under the Commerce Clause is broad in scope with regard to how they they regulate that market. I don't see how we can accept your argument that 'it's just insurance.' Once we say that there is a market and Congress can require people to participate in it, as some would say - or as you would say, that people are already participating in it - it seems to me that we can't say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power. It could regulate the market in any rational way. Congress has chosen to regulate the health care market. Everybody's in it, they said, so it can be regulated. This year, they looked at a particular serious problem, which is how people pay for it. And they decided to compel people to purchase insurance. But next year, they can decide to look at something else - a different problem - and decide how they are going to regulate it. And they'll be able to do it because they've already accepted the argument that this is a market in which everybody participates."
Scalia jumped in: "I tell you what the something else is. The something else is everybody has to exercise, because there's no doubt that lack of exercise cause — causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up. So the Federal government says everybody has to join an exercise club. That's the something else."
Mr. Verrilli tried to explain: "What matters here is whether Congress is choosing a tool that's reasonably adapted to the problem that Congress is confronting. And that may mean that the tool is different from a tool that Congress has chosen to use in the past."
Justice Scalia responded: "Well, that's both "Necessary and Proper." What you just said addresses what's necessary. Yes, has to be reasonably adapted. Necessary does not mean essential, just reasonably adapted. But in addition to being necessary, it has to be proper. And we've held in two cases that something that was reasonably adapted was not proper because it violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure. The argument here is that this also may be necessary, but it's not proper because it violates an equally evident principle in the Constitution, which is that the Federal Government is not supposed to be a government that has all powers; that it's supposed to be a government of limited powers. And that's what all this questioning has been about. What is left? If the government can do this, what, what else can it not do? But that's not the only constitutional principle at stake in this case. An equally evident constitutional principle is the principle that the Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers and that the vast majority of powers remain in the States and do not belong to the Federal Government. Do you acknowledge that that's a principle?" Verrilli so acknowledged.
Scalia continued: "I mean, the Tenth Amendment says the powers not given to the Federal Government are reserved, not just to the States, but to the States and the people. And the argument here is that the people were left to decide whether they want to buy insurance or not."
Justice Kennedy added: "The reason this Mandate is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts our tradition, our law, has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him absent some relation between you. And there is some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that's generally the rule. And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in the very fundamental way."
Chief Justice inserted: "The States are not limited to enumerated powers, but the Federal Government is. And it seems to me it's an entirely different question when you ask yourself whether or not there are going to be limits in the Federal power, as opposed to limits on the States."
Another issue that came up was whether the penalty could be classified as a tax (returning to some degree to the topic touched on the day before). If the penalty could be classified as a tax, then the thought is that the Individual Mandate could be supported, in the alternative, under Congress' "Tax and Spend" powers. Justice Scalia quickly noted that "the President has said it isn't a tax." Then Justice Ginsberg added: " A tax is to raise revenue, tax is a revenue-raising device, and the purpose of this exaction is to get people into the health care risk pool before they need medical care, and so it will be successful. If it doesn't raise any revenue, if it gets people to buy the insurance, that's what this penalty is designed to do - to affect conduct. The conduct is buy health protection, buy health insurance before you have a need for medical care. That's what the penalty is designed to do, not to raise revenue."
At that point, the Solicitor General stepped down and the respondents' attorney (that is, for the states), Mr. Clement was given time before the Court. He immediately struck down the administration's position that the Individual Mandate (the penalty, in particular) could be legally supported under the Taxing power. As he told the Court: "I think it might raise some issues about whether or not that would be a valid exercise of the taxing power. My constitutional concern is that it would be a disguised impermissible direct tax. And we all know that Congress is limited in its ability to impose direct taxes. The one thing I think the framers would have clearly identified as a direct tax is a tax on not having something. I mean, the framing generation was divided over whether a tax on carriages was a direct tax or not. Hamilton thought that was a indirect tax; Madison thought it was a direct tax. I have little doubt that both of them would have agreed that a tax on not having a carriage would have clearly been a direct tax. I also think they would have thought it clearly wasn't a valid regulation of the market in carriages."
Attorney Clement then moved on to the market that the government is trying to dominate: "What health insurance does and what all insurance does is it allows you to diversify risk. And so it's not just a matter of I'm paying now instead I'm paying later. That's credit. Insurance is different than credit. Insurance guarantees you an upfront, locked-in payment, and you won't have to pay any more than that even if you incur much great expenses. And in every other market that I know of for insurance, we let people basically make the decision whether they are relatively risk averse, whether they are relatively non-risk averse, and they can make the judgment based on..."
Justice Sotomayor interrupted: "But we don't in car insurance, I mean the states don't. Let me ask you a question: Do you think that if some states decided not to impose an insurance requirement, that the Federal Government would be without power to legislate and require every individual to buy car insurance?"
Clement answered: "Let me say this, you're right in the first point to say that it's the states that do it, which makes it different right there."
Justice Kennedy asked: "Isn't everyone in the market in the sense that they are creating a risk that the market must account for?" Similarly, Justice Kagan asked: "If the effect of all the uninsured people is to raise everybody's premiums, not just when they get sick, if they get sick, but right now in the aggregate, and Wickard and Raich tell us we should look at the aggregate, and the aggregate of all these uninsured people are increasing the normal family premium, Congress says, by a thousand dollars a year. Those people are in commerce. They are making decisions that are affecting the price that everybody pays for this service.
[Wickard v. Filburn (wheat case; 1924, holding that Farmer Filburn couldn't grow wheat for his own use because, if other were to do the same, then in the aggregate, all these farmers would have no need to buy wheat on the open market and would therefore affect commerce) and Gonzalez v. Raich (medical marijuana case; 2005; holding that California's Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana for medical use, conflicted with the federal government's Controlled Substances Act, which is a valid exercise of Congress' commerce powers)].
Mr. Clement disagreed. He answered: "Let's be careful about what they were regulating in Wickard. What they were regulating was the supply of wheat. It didn't in any way imply that they could require every American to go out and buy wheat. And yes, one of the consequences of regulating local market participants is it'll affect the supply and the demand for the product. That's why you can regulate them, because those local market participants have the same effect on the interstate market that a black market has on a legal market.
That aside, I don't think the point you make distinguishes the healthcare market from other markets. When I'm sitting in my house deciding I'm not to buy a car, I am causing the labor market in Detroit to go south. I am causing maybe somebody to lose their job, and for everybody to have to pay for it under welfare. So the cost shifting that the government tries to uniquely to associate with this market, it is everywhere. And even more to the point, the rationale that they think ultimately supports this legislation, that look, it's an economic decision, once you make the economic decision, we aggregate the decision, there is a substantial effect on commerce. That argument works here. It works in every single industry. There are other markets that affect every one: transportation, food, burial services, though we don't like to talk about that either. There also are situations where there are many economic effects from somebody's failure to purchase a product. My unwillingness to buy an electric car is forcing up the price of an electric car. If only more people demanded an electric car there would be economies of scale, and the price would go down.
If I could talk about the difference between the health insurance market and the health care market...... If some private company comes up with a great new wonder drug that would have huge benefits for everybody's health and if everybody had to buy it, it would facilitate economies of scale, and the production would be efficient, and the price would be cheaper and force everybody in the health care market, the actual health care market to buy the wonder drug, and if the government wanted to compel people to take this drug, I'd be up here making the same argument. I would be saying that there is no such authority within the commerce power of the federal government. In Federalist 45, Madison says the commerce power is a new power, but it's not one anyone has any apprehension about. And the reason they didn't have any apprehension about it is because it's a power that only operated once people were already in commerce. You see that from the text of the clause. The first kind of commerce Congress gets to regulate is commerce with foreign nations. Did anybody think the fledgling Republic had the power to compel some other nation into commerce with us? Of course not. And in the same way, I certainly don't think the framers had understood the commerce power to include the power to compel people to engage in commerce."
At that point, Attorney Clement stepped down and Michael Carvin, the attorney representing several small businesses (National Federation of Independent Businesses, NFIB), addressed the Court to argue the unconstitutionality of the PPACA. "I'd like to begin with the Solicitor General's main premise, which is that they can compel the purchase of health insurance in order to promote commerce in the health market because it will reduce uncompensated care. If you accept that argument, you have to fundamentally alter the text of the Constitution and give Congress plenary power. It simply doesn't matter whether or not this regulation will promote health care commerce by reducing uncompensated care; all that matters is whether the activity actually being regulated by the act negatively affects Congress or negatively affects commerce regulation, so that it's within the commerce power. If you agree with us that this is — exceeds commerce power, the law doesn't somehow become redeemed because it has beneficial policy effects in the health care market. In other words, Congress does not have the power to promote commerce. Congress has — Congress has the power to regulate commerce. And if the power exceeds their permissible regulatory authority, then the law is invalid... Think about it this way... when you've entered the marketplace they can impose all sorts of restrictions on you. But what can't they do? I think everyone intuitively understands that regulating participants after A and B have entered into a contract is fundamentally less intrusive than requiring the contract in the first place."
Justice Ginsberg asked: "Isn't the only way to prevent people from paying for the cost-free healthcare of those who are sick and uninsured to have people pay sooner rather than later?"
Carvin answered: "The real problem are those who default on their health care payments. That is an entirely different group of people, an entirely different activity than being uninsured. The people who impose the costs on the rest of us are people who engage in a different activity at a different time, which is defaulting on their health care payments. It's not the uninsured. Under Justice Kagan's theory, you could regulate anybody if they have got a statistical connection to a problem. You could say, since we could regulate people who enter into the mortgage market and impose mortgage insurance on them, we can simply impose the requirement to buy private mortgage insurance on everybody before they have entered the market because we are doing it in this prophylactic way before it develops." [Chief Justice Roberts interrupted to note that not everyone enters the housing market while everyone eventually enters the healthcare market] Carvin continued: "And my basic point to you is this: the Constitution only gives Congress the power to regulate things that negatively affect commerce or commerce regulation. It doesn't give them the power to regulate things that are statistically connected to things that negatively affect the commerce. If they have that power, then they obviously have the power to regulate everything because everything in the aggregate is statistically connected to something that negatively affects commerce, and every compelled purchase promotes commerce." (I admit, I initially had a hard time following that).
Finally, Mr. Carvin ended with these words: "We turn you to the Commerce Clause jurisprudence that bedeviled the Court before the 1930s, where they were drawing all these kinds of distinctions among industries; whereas our test is really very simple. Are you buying the product or is Congress compelling you to buy the product? I can't think of a brighter line. And again, if Congress has the power to compel you to buy this product, then obviously, they have got the power to provide you - to compel you to buy any product, because any purchase is going to benefit commerce, and this Court is never going to second-guess Congress's policy judgments on how important it is this product versus that product. The words "inactivity" and "activity" are not in the Constitution. But the words "commerce" and "noncommerce" are. It's a distinction that comes directly from the text of the Constitution.
The Framers consciously gave Congress the ability to regulate commerce, because that's not a particularly threatening activity that deprives you of individual freedom. If you were required, if you were authorized to require A to transfer property to B, you have, as the early cases put it, a monster in legislation which is against all reason in justice, because everyone intuitively understands that regulating people who voluntarily enter into contracts in setting changing conditions does not create the possibility of Congress compelling wealth transfers among the citizenry. And that is precisely why the Framers denied them the power to compel commerce, and precisely why they didn't give them plenary power."
On the third day of oral arguments, the Court engaged in a discussion of severability - whether the healthcare bill could survive if the Individual Mandate was struck down and whether other provisions could still survive. It was a tortuous line of questioning. Justice Scalia suggested many members of Congress might not have voted for the bill without the central provisions, and so perhaps it wouldn't be fair to allow remaining portions of the bill to survive. He also was emphatic that it was not the province of the Court to go through each and every page to sort out which provision should remain and which should go. He even joked that being required to read the 2,700-page bill should fall under the 8th Amendment's concept of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Justice Sotomayor argued that it was Congress' job to fix or scrap the bill, should the mandate be found unconstitutional. Opponents of the bill argued against severability, suggesting that simply striking the mandate while leaving in place corresponding new insurance regulations could result in a spike in premiums that Congress did not intend.
In the afternoon session, the justices considered a challenge by the 26 states to the expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income Americans, an important feature in the effort extending health insurance to an additional 30 million people. The court's liberal justices made it fairly clear they will vote to uphold the Medicaid expansion, which would take in 15 million people with the federal government paying almost all the costs. They did not seem to agree with the challengers that expansion of the program is unconstitutionally coercive. Justice Kagan asked: "Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?"
Attorney Clement defended the states' position: "Let me focus on what I think are the three hallmarks of this statute that make it uniquely coercive. One of them is the fact that this statute is tied to the nonvoluntary individual mandate. The second factor, of course, is the fact that Congress here made a distinct and conscious decision to tie the state's willingness to accept these new funds, not just to the new funds but to their entire participation in the statute, even though the coverage for these newly eligible individuals is segregated from the rest of the program. In other words, if a state doesn't want to cover the newly eligible individuals, it not only doesn't get the new money, it also doesn't get any of the money under the original contact, agreement (old money). What's coercive is not the absolute guarantee that the secretary could cut off every penny, but the fact that she could. And the third factor is the sheer size and scope of Medicaid. The expansion of Medicaid since 1984 is really breathtaking. In 1984 the Federal spending to the States was a shade over $21 billion for Medicaid. Right now it's $250 billion, and that's before the expansion under this statute. If the Secretary should withhold all funding for a state's poor population, that state would have an impossible time coming up with the funds on its own to cover those people."
Hopefully, we know where Justice Kennedy stands on matters that threaten to upset the balance of power created under our federalist system. In short, he has never been one to want to enlarge the government's status with regard to its relationship to the States.
The arguments and answers given on day two of course represent the meat of the case. I believe it is the closing remark by Attorney Carvin which holds the key to how Justice Kennedy will ultimately view the Individual Mandate. He emphasized that the ability to regulate commerce was not the same as compelling commerce for the latter would deprive individuals of individual liberty. I believe in his final analysis, Justice Kennedy will look at the implications the Individual Mandate has on individual liberty - the very precious intangible that our Founders so judiciously and ambitiously sought to protect and promote.
I point to two fairly recent cases to highlight Justice Kennedy's views on Liberty and Federalism - United States v. Lopez (1995) and Bond v. United States (2011). His words make his intentions clear. I believe his firm belief in the concept of federalism and the liberty interests it serves is an important insight as to how he may come down on the healthcare question, and especially the Individual Mandate.
In Lopez, the Court was asked to decide the constitutionality of a federal statute - the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a crime for any individual to "knowingly possess a firearm at a place that [he] knows...is a school zone." Alfonzo Lopez, a high school senior, carried a concealed weapon into his San Antonio, Texas high school and was arrested and charged under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The next day, the state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating a federal criminal statute, the Gun-Free School Zones Act. Lopez challenged the federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of Congress to legislate conduct in the states under the Commerce Clause. Justice Kennedy agreed with the majority that the conduct the federal statue sought to regulate was not in fact "commerce" and therefore was an unconstitutional exercise of authority. He wrote a concurring opinion:
The history of our Commerce Clause decisions contains at least two lessons of relevance to this case. The first, as stated at the outset, is the imprecision of content-based boundaries used without more to define the limits of the Commerce Clause. The second, related to the first but of even greater consequence, is that the Court as an institution and the legal system as a whole have an immense stake in the stability of our Commerce Clause jurisprudence as it has evolved to this point. Stare decisis operates with great force in counseling us not to call in question the essential principles now in place respecting the congressional power to regulate transactions of a commercial nature. That fundamental restraint on our power forecloses us from reverting to an understanding of commerce that would serve only an 18th-century economy, dependent then upon production and trading practices that had changed but little over the preceding centuries; it also mandates against returning to the time when congressional authority to regulate undoubted commercial activities was limited by a judicial determination that those matters had an insufficient connection to an interstate system. Congress can regulate in the commercial sphere on the assumption that we have a single market and a unified purpose to build a stable national economy.
In referring to the whole subject of the federal and state balance, we said this just three Terms ago: 'This framework has been sufficiently flexible over the past two centuries to allow for enormous changes in the nature of government. The Federal Government undertakes activities today that would have been unimaginable to the Framers in two senses: first, because the Framers would not have conceived that any government would conduct such activities; and second, because the Framers would not have believed that the Federal Government, rather than the States, would assume such responsibilities. Yet the powers conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution were phrased in language broad enough to allow for the expansion of the Federal Government's role.' It does not follow, however, that in every instance the Court lacks the authority and responsibility to review congressional attempts to alter the federal balance. This case requires us to consider our place in the design of the Government and to appreciate the significance of federalism in the whole structure of the Constitution.
Of the various structural elements in the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, and federalism, only concerning the last does there seem to be much uncertainty respecting the existence, and the content, of standards that allow the judiciary to play a significant role in maintaining the design contemplated by the Framers. Although the resolution of specific cases has proved difficult, we have derived from the Constitution workable standards to assist in preserving separation of powers and checks and balances. These standards are by now well accepted and judicial review is also established beyond question, Our role in preserving the federal balance seems more tenuous.
There is irony in this, because of the four structural elements in the Constitution just mentioned, federalism was the unique contribution of the Framers to political science and political theory. Though on the surface the idea may seem counterintuitive, it was the insight of the Framers that freedom was enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.
"In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other at the same time that each will be controlled by itself." James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front. . . . In the tension between federal and state power lies the promise of liberty. The Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals. State sovereignty is not just an end in itself. Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.
The theory that two governments accord more liberty than one requires for its realization two distinct and discernible lines of political accountability: one between the citizens and the Federal Government; the second between the citizens and the States. If, as Madison expected, the federal and state governments are to control each other, see Federalist No. 51, and hold each other in check by competing for the affections of the people, see Federalist No. 46, those citizens must have some means of knowing which of the two governments to hold accountable for the failure to perform a given function. Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it. Were the Federal Government to take over the regulation of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur and political responsibility would become illusory. The resultant inability to hold either branch of the government answerable to the citizens is more dangerous even than devolving too much authority to the remote central power.
To be sure, one conclusion that could be drawn from The Federalist Papers is that the balance between national and state power is entrusted in its entirety to the political process. Madison's observation that "the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due," (Federalist No. 46) can be interpreted to say that the essence of responsibility for a shift in power from the State to the Federal Government rests upon a political judgment, though he added assurance that "the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered, Whatever the judicial role, it is axiomatic that Congress does have substantial discretion and control over the federal balance.
For these reasons, it would be mistaken and mischievous for the political branches to forget that the sworn obligation to preserve and protect the Constitution in maintaining the federal balance is their own in the first and primary instance. In the Webster-Hayne Debates and the debates over the Civil Rights Acts before the Senate Committee on Commerce (88th Congress; 1963), some Congresses have accepted responsibility to confront the great questions of the proper federal balance in terms of lasting consequences for the constitutional design. The political branches of the Government must fulfill this grave constitutional obligation if democratic liberty and the federalism that secures it are to endure.
Although it is the obligation of all officers of the Government to respect the constitutional design, the federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or the other level of Government has tipped the scales too far.
Our ability to preserve this principle under the Commerce Clause has presented a much greater challenge. This clause has throughout the Court's history been the chief source of its adjudications regarding federalism no other body of opinions affords a fairer or more revealing test of judicial qualities. But as the branch whose distinctive duty it is to declare what the law is, are often called upon to resolve questions of constitutional law not susceptible to the mechanical application of bright and clear lines. The substantial element of political judgment in Commerce Clause matters leaves our institutional capacity to intervene more in doubt than when we decide cases, for instance, under the Bill of Rights even though clear and bright lines are often absent in the latter class of disputes. But our cases do not teach that we have no role at all in determining the meaning of the Commerce Clause.
The statute before us upsets the federal balance to a degree that renders it an unconstitutional assertion of the commerce power, and our intervention is required. As the Chief Justice explains, unlike the earlier cases to come before the Court here neither the actors nor their conduct have a commercial character, and neither the purposes nor the design of the statute have an evident commercial nexus. The statute makes the simple possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of the grounds of the school a criminal offense. In a sense, any conduct in this interdependent world of ours has an ultimate commercial origin or consequence, but we have not yet said the commerce power may reach so far. If Congress attempts that extension, then at the least we must inquire whether the exercise of national power seeks to intrude upon an area of traditional state concern.
If a State or municipality determines that harsh criminal sanctions are necessary and wise to deter students from carrying guns on school premises, the reserved powers of the States are sufficient to enact those measures. Indeed, over 40 States already have criminal laws outlawing the possession of firearms on or near school grounds."
In the case of Bond v. United States, a woman was convicted of trying to poison her husband's mistress. (24 times over several months). He had had a child with the mistress while still married to Bond. The government tried to convict her under a federal statute designed to go after terrorists and so she sued, claiming that she should have been convicted under an applicable state criminal statute. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that Bond lacked standing to challenge the statute. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, held that a criminal defendant who has been convicted under a federal statute can challenge that conviction on grounds that the statute is unconstitutional. In this particular case, the Court held that the statute exceeded the federal government's powers with respect to the Tenth Amendment. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion:
"The federal system rests on what might at first seem a counter-intuitive insight, that “freedom is enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 758 (1999). The Framers concluded that allocation of powers between the National Government and the States enhances freedom, first by protecting the integrity of the governments themselves, and second by protecting the people, from whom all governmental powers are derived.
The principles of limited national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined. While neither originates in the Tenth Amendment, both are expressed by it. Impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within the enumerated powers of the National Government, see New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), at 155–159, and action that exceeds the National Government’s enumerated powers undermines the sovereign interests of States. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 564 (1995). The unconstitutional action can cause concomitant injury to persons in individual cases.
Federalism has more than one dynamic. It is true that the federal structure serves to grant and delimit the prerogatives and responsibilities of the States and the National Government vis-à-vis one another. The allocation of powers in our federal system preserves the integrity, dignity, and residual sovereignty of the States. The federal balance is, in part, an end in itself, to ensure that States function as political entities in their own right.
But that is not its exclusive sphere of operation. Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity. “State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.
Some of these liberties are of a political character. The federal structure allows local policies 'more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society,' permits 'innovation and experimentation,' enables greater citizen 'involvement in democratic processes,' and makes government 'more responsive by putting the States in competition for a mobile citizenry.' [All of these would protect and enlarge individual liberty and protect against an oppressive "one-size-fits-all" approach].
Federalism secures the freedom of the individual. It allows States to respond, through the enactment of positive law, to the initiative of those who seek a voice in shaping the destiny of their own times without having to rely solely upon the political processes that control a remote central power. True, of course, these objects cannot be vindicated by the Judiciary in the absence of a proper case or controversy; but the individual liberty secured by federalism is not simply derivative of the rights of the States.
Federalism also protects the liberty of all persons within a State by ensuring that laws enacted in excess of delegated governmental power cannot direct or control their actions. [See ibid]. By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When government acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake.
The limitations that federalism entails are not therefore a matter of rights belonging only to the States. States are not the sole intended beneficiaries of federalism. An individual has a direct interest in objecting to laws that upset the constitutional balance between the National Government and the States when the enforcement of those laws causes injury that is concrete, particular, and redressable. Fidelity to principles of federalism is not for the States alone to vindicate."
The outcome of this historic case against the massively oppressive healthcare reform bill will no doubt shape the legacy of the Roberts’ Court, influence President Obama's re-election prospects, and potentially deepen the ideological rift that is already dividing the country. But most importantly, the outcome will determine what impact the US Constitution still has on protecting the individual from the pernicious reaches of government.
References:
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). Referenced at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1260.ZO.html
Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. ___ (2010).
"Anthony A. Kennedy," NY Times, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/anthony_m_kennedy/index.html
Transcript and Audio for Monday's Arguments: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74477.html
Transcript and Audio for Tuesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/27/149465820/transcript-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-the-individual-mandate
Transcript and Audio for Wednesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/28/149548299/transcript-audio-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-medicaid-expansion
Audio for Tuesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/Hft6z3
Audio for Wednesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/GX1p23
(morning) and http://apne.ws/GXdZOP (afternoon).
"The Supreme Court Arguments Are Over - What Happens Now?," Kaiser Health News, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2012/March/29/supreme-court-big-picture-wrap-up.aspx
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On Monday, March 26, the Supreme Court began oral arguments in the highly-anticipated case challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. By Wednesday afternoon, the hearings had concluded. The historic arguments consolidated an appeal from 26 states, a group representing several small businesses, and several individuals who contend that the 2010 health care law, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, is unconstitutional.
Perhaps significantly, Justice Kennedy, the Court's notorious swing vote, appeared to be very concerned about the status of young people with respect to the healthcare bill. He noted that the government hasn't exactly been honest about its intentions with the bill, which was to offset the burden that uninsured individuals place on healthcare.
If the administration was really interested in preventing young people (many who are uninsured) from being such a burden, the healthcare plan would allow them to buy only catastrophic health insurance (instead of the plan that includes well visits, preventative care). Catastrophic health insurance is all that 20-30 year-olds really need; It's the only product that makes any economic sense for them. But Obamacare doesn't allow that. So, as Kennedy emphasized, we see what the healthcare bill is really all about. It's about using 20-30 year-olds to subsidize the plan, to subsidize insurance for those who can't afford it. It's about using young healthy people to fund the program. It's about a social scheme.
As we all know, the government's plan is to subsidize health insurance for everyone, especially those who are uninsured and sick (approximately 20% of all uninsured). The plan forces insurance companies to cover the sick. But it doesn't want to use the typical means to pay for this - such as tax subsidies. Instead, the government wants to reach OUTSIDE the market and COMPEL a whole bunch of healthy people into that market so they can be used to subsidize the program and help bring healthcare premiums down. In fact, this was the finding by Congress: that bringing young healthy people into the market will bring down the health insurance premium by about 15% for everyone. Unfortunately, though, it will force them to buy something they don't need or want.
The healthcare challenge, on its face, is about the Individual Mandate - the government's belief that it has the power under the Commerce Clause to force Americans to purchase the specific health insurance it dictates, even those who don't need it. It is also about the fundamental scheme in place, established by our Founders and memorialized with the Tenth Amendment, that the federal government is a government of limited powers with the bulk of powers being reserved to the States where they can most effectively regulate for the health, safety, welfare, and morality of their people. It is about the section of the bill which enlarges the Medicaid program and coerces the States to participate in its healthcare scheme by threatening to withhold all Medicaid funding should they decide not to. According to the states, the sheer volume of the federal funding at stake leaves them with no practical capacity to withdraw from Medicaid. By placing all of a state’s federal Medicaid dollars at risk for the failure to adhere to the healthcare bill’s conditions, they claim the Act also amounts to compulsion. And furthermore, they claim that conditions imposed on state governments to implement the scheme constitutes impermissible commandeering of the states and their resources.
But the underlying issue is individual liberty. It is about the right of an individual to be free from government compulsion - not being forced to do something against one's will or spending one's money (that is, what remains after the government takes its cut in the form of income taxes) on things one don't want or need. It's the fundamental right to conduct one's life the way he or she feels fit and to make his or her own personal decisions. It's the basic right "to be left alone" by government.
And the decision, therefore, will speak volumes about how strongly our nation's highest court is committed to this grand notion of individual liberty. We already know that there are several justices who believe in an expansive view of government and use the court to evolve its responsibilities. And there are those justices who believe in the strict interpretation of the Constitution and in limits to federal power. And then there is Justice Kennedy, who can be defined by neither classification. His opinion may turn out to be the deciding factor in this case.
All eyes are usually on Justice Kennedy, the genial justice who sits on the fence, often keeping interested parties nervous as to which side he will side with - the liberal bloc (Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan) or the conservative bloc (Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the Chief Justice John Roberts). Kennedy was appointed to the bench in 1988 by President Reagan, after the Senate failed to confirm his first choice, committed originalist Robert Bork. Reagan also appointed Justice Scalia. At the time of his appointment, he was a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, appointed by President Gerald R. Ford. The Ninth Circuit is known as the most liberal of the circuit courts, and in fact, tried to remove the words "Under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Kennedy's crucial swing vote has often been the decisive factor in many of our most important and controversial cases of recent years.
• Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000; upholding the Boy Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from being scoutmasters. He joined the conservative justices in this decision)
• Lawrence v. Texas (2003; finding the right of homosexual men to engage in sodomy in the privacy of their home thereby overturning an earlier Supreme Court decision which banned the practice. He joined the liberal justices on this decision)
• Kelo v. City of New London (2005; holding that local government has the power to take private property for economic development through the use of eminent domain. He joined the liberal justices in this decision)
• United States v. Lopez (2005: holding that possession of a gun in a local school zone is not an economic activity that might, in the aggregate, have a substantial effect on interstate commerce because the conduct at issue has nothing to do with "commerce." He joined the conservative justices in this decision)
• Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008; holding that the 8th Amendment bars Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the heinous rape of a child where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death, although the injuries were so extensive, doctors don't know how she survived. Kennedy joined the liberal justices on this decision)
• Boumediene v. Bush (2008; a case challenging the legality of Boumediene’s detention at Guantanamo Bay. Kennedy sided with the four liberal justices in finding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus applies to persons held in Guantanamo Bay and to persons designated as enemy combatants on that territory)
• District of Columbia v. Heller (2008; holding that the 2nd Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms; All four of the liberal justices believe it only applies to state militias and therefore prevents individuals from having the right to possess guns in their homes)
• McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010; holding that Heller applies to the States through the 14th Amendment. holding that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense applicable to the states. Kennedy sided with the conservative justices in asserting that these rights are "fundamental to the nation's scheme of ordered liberty" and are "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition" and hence are appropriately applied to the states through the 14th Amendment)
• Brown v. Plata (2011; holding that releasing violent criminals from an over-crowded prison is a proper remedy to address the violation of prisoners' 8th Amendment guarantee against 'cruel and unusual punishment' caused by long wait times to see prison doctors and less-than-ideal medical accommodations)
In the 2008–2009 term, there were 16 decisions in which the justices split strictly along ideological lines. Kennedy joined the conservative members of the Court eleven times and the liberals only five.
And so, all eyes were on Justice Kennedy in the case against the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and all ears were open to his questions and comments, in the hopes of providing a glimpse into his mindset regarding the administration's huge power grab under the Act.
On the first day of hearings, the justices had to entertain whether the healthcare challenge is even allowable under the Anti Injunction Act (AIA), a federal tax law that says, in essence, that a taxpayer cannot challenge a tax until it comes into effect. The provision at issue is the penalty portion of the Act, which requires that almost every individual purchase health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The questions before the Court were twofold: (1) Can the penalty be classified as a "tax" and therefore implicate the AIA? And (2) If so, is it then premature for the court to consider the present challenge to the individual mandate?
Justice Breyer asked point blank: "Where I see the problem is in the part of the AIA which refers to the 'assessment or collection of any tax.' Now, Congress has nowhere used the word 'tax.' What it says is 'penalty.' Moreover, this is not in the Internal Revenue Code 'but for purposes of collection.' And so why is this a tax?" He further emphasized that lawmakers intentionally did not use the term when they crafted the legislation nor did they intend the penalty as a tax.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, another liberal member of the Court, also expressed skepticism. "This is not a revenue-raising measure because, if it's successful, nobody will pay the penalty and therefore there will be no revenue to raise."
Judging on the arguments and discussion made the first day, it seems likely the case will be decided and not postponed. Even the administration's lawyer, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli urged the justices to decide the merits of the dispute. "This case presents issues of great moment," he said.
On the second day of hearings Verrilli faced a barrage of skeptical questions from four of the court’s more conservative justices, including Justice Kennedy. The questions posed to him went straight to the central issue in the case and that is whether the federal government can compel individuals not engaged in commerce to buy a product - health insurance - and hence become part of that commerce in order to be regulated. “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” Justice Kennedy asked. That was his very first question of the day. He later told Mr. Verrilli that the federal government faced “a heavy burden of justification” for the Individual Mandate and pressed him to articulate “some limits on the Commerce Clause."
The court focused on whether the mandate for Americans to have insurance "amounts to an affirmative duty to engage in commerce" and is therefore "an unprecedented step beyond what our cases allow," which is how Justice Kennedy phrased the issue. He then told Verrilli: "With this law, you are changing the relationship of the individual to the government.”
Chief Justice Roberts asked: "So, can the government require you to buy a cell phone because that would facilitate responding when you need emergency services? That way, you can just dial 911 no matter where you are?" Verrilli tried to argue that Roberts' scenario was distinguishable from the health care market. But Roberts fired back: "It seems to me that's the same as in my hypothetical. You don't know when you're going to need police assistance. You can't predict the extent to emergency response that you'll need. But when you do, and the government provides it. I thought that was an important part of your argument, that when you need health care, the government will make sure you get it. Well, when you need police assistance or fire assistance or ambulance assistance, the government is going to make sure to the best of its ability that you get it."
Justice Alito asked Solicitor General Verrilli: "Do you think there is a, a market for burial services?" He answered in the affirmative. Alito then continued: "All right, suppose that you and I walked around downtown Washington at lunch hour and we found a couple of healthy young people and we stopped them and we said, "You know what you're doing? You are financing your burial services right now because eventually you're going to die, and somebody is going to have to pay for it, and if you don't have burial insurance and you haven't saved money for it, you're going to shift the cost to somebody else. Isn't that a very artificial way of talking about what somebody is doing?" Verrilli didn't agree. But Alito pushed further: "And if that's true, why isn't it equally artificial to say that somebody who is doing absolutely nothing about health care is financing health care services? See, I don't see the difference. You can get burial insurance. You can get health insurance. Most people are going to need health care. Almost everybody. Everybody is going to be buried or cremated at some point. What's the difference? If you don't have money then someone has to pay... Whether the State or a family member. And isn't that what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in — in 2016. The administration estimates that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the act wishes to serve, but if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else." Verrilli acknowledged that this was in fact the case.
Chief Justice Roberts commented: "It's critical how you define the market. If I understand the law, the policies that you're requiring people to purchase involve - must contain provision for maternity and newborn care, pediatric services, and substance use treatment. It seems to me that you cannot say that everybody is going to need substance use treatment, substance use treatment or pediatric services, and yet that is part of what you require them to purchase. Your theory is that there is a market in which everyone participates because everybody might need a certain range of health care services, and yet you're requiring people who are never going to need pediatric or maternity services to participate in that market."
He then asked: "If the government can force people to buy health insurance can it require people to buy certain types of cars? Broccoli?" Justice Scalia hinted that if everyone were forced to buy a new car, it might help lower the costs of new cars for everyone.
Scalia offered his interpretation of the government's case: "I don't agree with you that the relevant market here is health care. You're not regulating health care. You're regulating insurance. It's the insurance market that you're addressing and you're saying that some people who are not in it must be in it. That approach is different from the regulation of any type of commerce that already exists out there."
Solicitor General Verrilli tried to paraphrase the government's position: "Our position is that it's not an illegitimate exercise of the commerce power for some people to subsidize others. You're young and healthy one day, but you don't stay that way. And the system works over time."
Justice Scalia spoke up: "We're not stupid. They're going to buy insurance later. They're young and need the money now. When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring high medical bills, they'll buy insurance, like the rest of us. You seem to suggest that they are never going to buy it. You could solve that problem by simply not requiring the insurance company to sell it to somebody who has a condition that is going to require medical treatment, or at least not require them to sell it to him at a rate that he sells it to healthy people. But you don't want to do that. And to me, that seems like a problem created by the government - a self-created problem."
Chief Justice Roberts added: "You say your argument is limited to health insurance But once you establish that you have a market for health care, would you suppose Congress's power under the Commerce Clause is broad in scope with regard to how they they regulate that market. I don't see how we can accept your argument that 'it's just insurance.' Once we say that there is a market and Congress can require people to participate in it, as some would say - or as you would say, that people are already participating in it - it seems to me that we can't say there are limitations on what Congress can do under its commerce power. It could regulate the market in any rational way. Congress has chosen to regulate the health care market. Everybody's in it, they said, so it can be regulated. This year, they looked at a particular serious problem, which is how people pay for it. And they decided to compel people to purchase insurance. But next year, they can decide to look at something else - a different problem - and decide how they are going to regulate it. And they'll be able to do it because they've already accepted the argument that this is a market in which everybody participates."
Scalia jumped in: "I tell you what the something else is. The something else is everybody has to exercise, because there's no doubt that lack of exercise cause — causes illness, and that causes health care costs to go up. So the Federal government says everybody has to join an exercise club. That's the something else."
Mr. Verrilli tried to explain: "What matters here is whether Congress is choosing a tool that's reasonably adapted to the problem that Congress is confronting. And that may mean that the tool is different from a tool that Congress has chosen to use in the past."
Justice Scalia responded: "Well, that's both "Necessary and Proper." What you just said addresses what's necessary. Yes, has to be reasonably adapted. Necessary does not mean essential, just reasonably adapted. But in addition to being necessary, it has to be proper. And we've held in two cases that something that was reasonably adapted was not proper because it violated the sovereignty of the States, which was implicit in the constitutional structure. The argument here is that this also may be necessary, but it's not proper because it violates an equally evident principle in the Constitution, which is that the Federal Government is not supposed to be a government that has all powers; that it's supposed to be a government of limited powers. And that's what all this questioning has been about. What is left? If the government can do this, what, what else can it not do? But that's not the only constitutional principle at stake in this case. An equally evident constitutional principle is the principle that the Federal Government is a government of enumerated powers and that the vast majority of powers remain in the States and do not belong to the Federal Government. Do you acknowledge that that's a principle?" Verrilli so acknowledged.
Scalia continued: "I mean, the Tenth Amendment says the powers not given to the Federal Government are reserved, not just to the States, but to the States and the people. And the argument here is that the people were left to decide whether they want to buy insurance or not."
Justice Kennedy added: "The reason this Mandate is concerning is because it requires the individual to do an affirmative act. In the law of torts our tradition, our law, has been that you don't have the duty to rescue someone if that person is in danger. The blind man is walking in front of a car and you do not have a duty to stop him absent some relation between you. And there is some severe moral criticisms of that rule, but that's generally the rule. And here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in the very fundamental way."
Chief Justice inserted: "The States are not limited to enumerated powers, but the Federal Government is. And it seems to me it's an entirely different question when you ask yourself whether or not there are going to be limits in the Federal power, as opposed to limits on the States."
Another issue that came up was whether the penalty could be classified as a tax (returning to some degree to the topic touched on the day before). If the penalty could be classified as a tax, then the thought is that the Individual Mandate could be supported, in the alternative, under Congress' "Tax and Spend" powers. Justice Scalia quickly noted that "the President has said it isn't a tax." Then Justice Ginsberg added: " A tax is to raise revenue, tax is a revenue-raising device, and the purpose of this exaction is to get people into the health care risk pool before they need medical care, and so it will be successful. If it doesn't raise any revenue, if it gets people to buy the insurance, that's what this penalty is designed to do - to affect conduct. The conduct is buy health protection, buy health insurance before you have a need for medical care. That's what the penalty is designed to do, not to raise revenue."
At that point, the Solicitor General stepped down and the respondents' attorney (that is, for the states), Mr. Clement was given time before the Court. He immediately struck down the administration's position that the Individual Mandate (the penalty, in particular) could be legally supported under the Taxing power. As he told the Court: "I think it might raise some issues about whether or not that would be a valid exercise of the taxing power. My constitutional concern is that it would be a disguised impermissible direct tax. And we all know that Congress is limited in its ability to impose direct taxes. The one thing I think the framers would have clearly identified as a direct tax is a tax on not having something. I mean, the framing generation was divided over whether a tax on carriages was a direct tax or not. Hamilton thought that was a indirect tax; Madison thought it was a direct tax. I have little doubt that both of them would have agreed that a tax on not having a carriage would have clearly been a direct tax. I also think they would have thought it clearly wasn't a valid regulation of the market in carriages."
Attorney Clement then moved on to the market that the government is trying to dominate: "What health insurance does and what all insurance does is it allows you to diversify risk. And so it's not just a matter of I'm paying now instead I'm paying later. That's credit. Insurance is different than credit. Insurance guarantees you an upfront, locked-in payment, and you won't have to pay any more than that even if you incur much great expenses. And in every other market that I know of for insurance, we let people basically make the decision whether they are relatively risk averse, whether they are relatively non-risk averse, and they can make the judgment based on..."
Justice Sotomayor interrupted: "But we don't in car insurance, I mean the states don't. Let me ask you a question: Do you think that if some states decided not to impose an insurance requirement, that the Federal Government would be without power to legislate and require every individual to buy car insurance?"
Clement answered: "Let me say this, you're right in the first point to say that it's the states that do it, which makes it different right there."
Justice Kennedy asked: "Isn't everyone in the market in the sense that they are creating a risk that the market must account for?" Similarly, Justice Kagan asked: "If the effect of all the uninsured people is to raise everybody's premiums, not just when they get sick, if they get sick, but right now in the aggregate, and Wickard and Raich tell us we should look at the aggregate, and the aggregate of all these uninsured people are increasing the normal family premium, Congress says, by a thousand dollars a year. Those people are in commerce. They are making decisions that are affecting the price that everybody pays for this service.
[Wickard v. Filburn (wheat case; 1924, holding that Farmer Filburn couldn't grow wheat for his own use because, if other were to do the same, then in the aggregate, all these farmers would have no need to buy wheat on the open market and would therefore affect commerce) and Gonzalez v. Raich (medical marijuana case; 2005; holding that California's Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana for medical use, conflicted with the federal government's Controlled Substances Act, which is a valid exercise of Congress' commerce powers)].
Mr. Clement disagreed. He answered: "Let's be careful about what they were regulating in Wickard. What they were regulating was the supply of wheat. It didn't in any way imply that they could require every American to go out and buy wheat. And yes, one of the consequences of regulating local market participants is it'll affect the supply and the demand for the product. That's why you can regulate them, because those local market participants have the same effect on the interstate market that a black market has on a legal market.
That aside, I don't think the point you make distinguishes the healthcare market from other markets. When I'm sitting in my house deciding I'm not to buy a car, I am causing the labor market in Detroit to go south. I am causing maybe somebody to lose their job, and for everybody to have to pay for it under welfare. So the cost shifting that the government tries to uniquely to associate with this market, it is everywhere. And even more to the point, the rationale that they think ultimately supports this legislation, that look, it's an economic decision, once you make the economic decision, we aggregate the decision, there is a substantial effect on commerce. That argument works here. It works in every single industry. There are other markets that affect every one: transportation, food, burial services, though we don't like to talk about that either. There also are situations where there are many economic effects from somebody's failure to purchase a product. My unwillingness to buy an electric car is forcing up the price of an electric car. If only more people demanded an electric car there would be economies of scale, and the price would go down.
If I could talk about the difference between the health insurance market and the health care market...... If some private company comes up with a great new wonder drug that would have huge benefits for everybody's health and if everybody had to buy it, it would facilitate economies of scale, and the production would be efficient, and the price would be cheaper and force everybody in the health care market, the actual health care market to buy the wonder drug, and if the government wanted to compel people to take this drug, I'd be up here making the same argument. I would be saying that there is no such authority within the commerce power of the federal government. In Federalist 45, Madison says the commerce power is a new power, but it's not one anyone has any apprehension about. And the reason they didn't have any apprehension about it is because it's a power that only operated once people were already in commerce. You see that from the text of the clause. The first kind of commerce Congress gets to regulate is commerce with foreign nations. Did anybody think the fledgling Republic had the power to compel some other nation into commerce with us? Of course not. And in the same way, I certainly don't think the framers had understood the commerce power to include the power to compel people to engage in commerce."
At that point, Attorney Clement stepped down and Michael Carvin, the attorney representing several small businesses (National Federation of Independent Businesses, NFIB), addressed the Court to argue the unconstitutionality of the PPACA. "I'd like to begin with the Solicitor General's main premise, which is that they can compel the purchase of health insurance in order to promote commerce in the health market because it will reduce uncompensated care. If you accept that argument, you have to fundamentally alter the text of the Constitution and give Congress plenary power. It simply doesn't matter whether or not this regulation will promote health care commerce by reducing uncompensated care; all that matters is whether the activity actually being regulated by the act negatively affects Congress or negatively affects commerce regulation, so that it's within the commerce power. If you agree with us that this is — exceeds commerce power, the law doesn't somehow become redeemed because it has beneficial policy effects in the health care market. In other words, Congress does not have the power to promote commerce. Congress has — Congress has the power to regulate commerce. And if the power exceeds their permissible regulatory authority, then the law is invalid... Think about it this way... when you've entered the marketplace they can impose all sorts of restrictions on you. But what can't they do? I think everyone intuitively understands that regulating participants after A and B have entered into a contract is fundamentally less intrusive than requiring the contract in the first place."
Justice Ginsberg asked: "Isn't the only way to prevent people from paying for the cost-free healthcare of those who are sick and uninsured to have people pay sooner rather than later?"
Carvin answered: "The real problem are those who default on their health care payments. That is an entirely different group of people, an entirely different activity than being uninsured. The people who impose the costs on the rest of us are people who engage in a different activity at a different time, which is defaulting on their health care payments. It's not the uninsured. Under Justice Kagan's theory, you could regulate anybody if they have got a statistical connection to a problem. You could say, since we could regulate people who enter into the mortgage market and impose mortgage insurance on them, we can simply impose the requirement to buy private mortgage insurance on everybody before they have entered the market because we are doing it in this prophylactic way before it develops." [Chief Justice Roberts interrupted to note that not everyone enters the housing market while everyone eventually enters the healthcare market] Carvin continued: "And my basic point to you is this: the Constitution only gives Congress the power to regulate things that negatively affect commerce or commerce regulation. It doesn't give them the power to regulate things that are statistically connected to things that negatively affect the commerce. If they have that power, then they obviously have the power to regulate everything because everything in the aggregate is statistically connected to something that negatively affects commerce, and every compelled purchase promotes commerce." (I admit, I initially had a hard time following that).
Finally, Mr. Carvin ended with these words: "We turn you to the Commerce Clause jurisprudence that bedeviled the Court before the 1930s, where they were drawing all these kinds of distinctions among industries; whereas our test is really very simple. Are you buying the product or is Congress compelling you to buy the product? I can't think of a brighter line. And again, if Congress has the power to compel you to buy this product, then obviously, they have got the power to provide you - to compel you to buy any product, because any purchase is going to benefit commerce, and this Court is never going to second-guess Congress's policy judgments on how important it is this product versus that product. The words "inactivity" and "activity" are not in the Constitution. But the words "commerce" and "noncommerce" are. It's a distinction that comes directly from the text of the Constitution.
The Framers consciously gave Congress the ability to regulate commerce, because that's not a particularly threatening activity that deprives you of individual freedom. If you were required, if you were authorized to require A to transfer property to B, you have, as the early cases put it, a monster in legislation which is against all reason in justice, because everyone intuitively understands that regulating people who voluntarily enter into contracts in setting changing conditions does not create the possibility of Congress compelling wealth transfers among the citizenry. And that is precisely why the Framers denied them the power to compel commerce, and precisely why they didn't give them plenary power."
On the third day of oral arguments, the Court engaged in a discussion of severability - whether the healthcare bill could survive if the Individual Mandate was struck down and whether other provisions could still survive. It was a tortuous line of questioning. Justice Scalia suggested many members of Congress might not have voted for the bill without the central provisions, and so perhaps it wouldn't be fair to allow remaining portions of the bill to survive. He also was emphatic that it was not the province of the Court to go through each and every page to sort out which provision should remain and which should go. He even joked that being required to read the 2,700-page bill should fall under the 8th Amendment's concept of "Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Justice Sotomayor argued that it was Congress' job to fix or scrap the bill, should the mandate be found unconstitutional. Opponents of the bill argued against severability, suggesting that simply striking the mandate while leaving in place corresponding new insurance regulations could result in a spike in premiums that Congress did not intend.
In the afternoon session, the justices considered a challenge by the 26 states to the expansion of the Medicaid program for low-income Americans, an important feature in the effort extending health insurance to an additional 30 million people. The court's liberal justices made it fairly clear they will vote to uphold the Medicaid expansion, which would take in 15 million people with the federal government paying almost all the costs. They did not seem to agree with the challengers that expansion of the program is unconstitutionally coercive. Justice Kagan asked: "Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?"
Attorney Clement defended the states' position: "Let me focus on what I think are the three hallmarks of this statute that make it uniquely coercive. One of them is the fact that this statute is tied to the nonvoluntary individual mandate. The second factor, of course, is the fact that Congress here made a distinct and conscious decision to tie the state's willingness to accept these new funds, not just to the new funds but to their entire participation in the statute, even though the coverage for these newly eligible individuals is segregated from the rest of the program. In other words, if a state doesn't want to cover the newly eligible individuals, it not only doesn't get the new money, it also doesn't get any of the money under the original contact, agreement (old money). What's coercive is not the absolute guarantee that the secretary could cut off every penny, but the fact that she could. And the third factor is the sheer size and scope of Medicaid. The expansion of Medicaid since 1984 is really breathtaking. In 1984 the Federal spending to the States was a shade over $21 billion for Medicaid. Right now it's $250 billion, and that's before the expansion under this statute. If the Secretary should withhold all funding for a state's poor population, that state would have an impossible time coming up with the funds on its own to cover those people."
Hopefully, we know where Justice Kennedy stands on matters that threaten to upset the balance of power created under our federalist system. In short, he has never been one to want to enlarge the government's status with regard to its relationship to the States.
The arguments and answers given on day two of course represent the meat of the case. I believe it is the closing remark by Attorney Carvin which holds the key to how Justice Kennedy will ultimately view the Individual Mandate. He emphasized that the ability to regulate commerce was not the same as compelling commerce for the latter would deprive individuals of individual liberty. I believe in his final analysis, Justice Kennedy will look at the implications the Individual Mandate has on individual liberty - the very precious intangible that our Founders so judiciously and ambitiously sought to protect and promote.
I point to two fairly recent cases to highlight Justice Kennedy's views on Liberty and Federalism - United States v. Lopez (1995) and Bond v. United States (2011). His words make his intentions clear. I believe his firm belief in the concept of federalism and the liberty interests it serves is an important insight as to how he may come down on the healthcare question, and especially the Individual Mandate.
In Lopez, the Court was asked to decide the constitutionality of a federal statute - the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, which made it a crime for any individual to "knowingly possess a firearm at a place that [he] knows...is a school zone." Alfonzo Lopez, a high school senior, carried a concealed weapon into his San Antonio, Texas high school and was arrested and charged under Texas law with firearm possession on school premises. The next day, the state charges were dismissed after federal agents charged Lopez with violating a federal criminal statute, the Gun-Free School Zones Act. Lopez challenged the federal statute on the grounds that it exceeded the power of Congress to legislate conduct in the states under the Commerce Clause. Justice Kennedy agreed with the majority that the conduct the federal statue sought to regulate was not in fact "commerce" and therefore was an unconstitutional exercise of authority. He wrote a concurring opinion:
The history of our Commerce Clause decisions contains at least two lessons of relevance to this case. The first, as stated at the outset, is the imprecision of content-based boundaries used without more to define the limits of the Commerce Clause. The second, related to the first but of even greater consequence, is that the Court as an institution and the legal system as a whole have an immense stake in the stability of our Commerce Clause jurisprudence as it has evolved to this point. Stare decisis operates with great force in counseling us not to call in question the essential principles now in place respecting the congressional power to regulate transactions of a commercial nature. That fundamental restraint on our power forecloses us from reverting to an understanding of commerce that would serve only an 18th-century economy, dependent then upon production and trading practices that had changed but little over the preceding centuries; it also mandates against returning to the time when congressional authority to regulate undoubted commercial activities was limited by a judicial determination that those matters had an insufficient connection to an interstate system. Congress can regulate in the commercial sphere on the assumption that we have a single market and a unified purpose to build a stable national economy.
In referring to the whole subject of the federal and state balance, we said this just three Terms ago: 'This framework has been sufficiently flexible over the past two centuries to allow for enormous changes in the nature of government. The Federal Government undertakes activities today that would have been unimaginable to the Framers in two senses: first, because the Framers would not have conceived that any government would conduct such activities; and second, because the Framers would not have believed that the Federal Government, rather than the States, would assume such responsibilities. Yet the powers conferred upon the Federal Government by the Constitution were phrased in language broad enough to allow for the expansion of the Federal Government's role.' It does not follow, however, that in every instance the Court lacks the authority and responsibility to review congressional attempts to alter the federal balance. This case requires us to consider our place in the design of the Government and to appreciate the significance of federalism in the whole structure of the Constitution.
Of the various structural elements in the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial review, and federalism, only concerning the last does there seem to be much uncertainty respecting the existence, and the content, of standards that allow the judiciary to play a significant role in maintaining the design contemplated by the Framers. Although the resolution of specific cases has proved difficult, we have derived from the Constitution workable standards to assist in preserving separation of powers and checks and balances. These standards are by now well accepted and judicial review is also established beyond question, Our role in preserving the federal balance seems more tenuous.
There is irony in this, because of the four structural elements in the Constitution just mentioned, federalism was the unique contribution of the Framers to political science and political theory. Though on the surface the idea may seem counterintuitive, it was the insight of the Framers that freedom was enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.
"In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other at the same time that each will be controlled by itself." James Madison, Federalist No. 51
Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front. . . . In the tension between federal and state power lies the promise of liberty. The Constitution divides authority between federal and state governments for the protection of individuals. State sovereignty is not just an end in itself. Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.
The theory that two governments accord more liberty than one requires for its realization two distinct and discernible lines of political accountability: one between the citizens and the Federal Government; the second between the citizens and the States. If, as Madison expected, the federal and state governments are to control each other, see Federalist No. 51, and hold each other in check by competing for the affections of the people, see Federalist No. 46, those citizens must have some means of knowing which of the two governments to hold accountable for the failure to perform a given function. Federalism serves to assign political responsibility, not to obscure it. Were the Federal Government to take over the regulation of entire areas of traditional state concern, areas having nothing to do with the regulation of commercial activities, the boundaries between the spheres of federal and state authority would blur and political responsibility would become illusory. The resultant inability to hold either branch of the government answerable to the citizens is more dangerous even than devolving too much authority to the remote central power.
To be sure, one conclusion that could be drawn from The Federalist Papers is that the balance between national and state power is entrusted in its entirety to the political process. Madison's observation that "the people ought not surely to be precluded from giving most of their confidence where they may discover it to be most due," (Federalist No. 46) can be interpreted to say that the essence of responsibility for a shift in power from the State to the Federal Government rests upon a political judgment, though he added assurance that "the State governments could have little to apprehend, because it is only within a certain sphere that the federal power can, in the nature of things, be advantageously administered, Whatever the judicial role, it is axiomatic that Congress does have substantial discretion and control over the federal balance.
For these reasons, it would be mistaken and mischievous for the political branches to forget that the sworn obligation to preserve and protect the Constitution in maintaining the federal balance is their own in the first and primary instance. In the Webster-Hayne Debates and the debates over the Civil Rights Acts before the Senate Committee on Commerce (88th Congress; 1963), some Congresses have accepted responsibility to confront the great questions of the proper federal balance in terms of lasting consequences for the constitutional design. The political branches of the Government must fulfill this grave constitutional obligation if democratic liberty and the federalism that secures it are to endure.
Although it is the obligation of all officers of the Government to respect the constitutional design, the federal balance is too essential a part of our constitutional structure and plays too vital a role in securing freedom for us to admit inability to intervene when one or the other level of Government has tipped the scales too far.
Our ability to preserve this principle under the Commerce Clause has presented a much greater challenge. This clause has throughout the Court's history been the chief source of its adjudications regarding federalism no other body of opinions affords a fairer or more revealing test of judicial qualities. But as the branch whose distinctive duty it is to declare what the law is, are often called upon to resolve questions of constitutional law not susceptible to the mechanical application of bright and clear lines. The substantial element of political judgment in Commerce Clause matters leaves our institutional capacity to intervene more in doubt than when we decide cases, for instance, under the Bill of Rights even though clear and bright lines are often absent in the latter class of disputes. But our cases do not teach that we have no role at all in determining the meaning of the Commerce Clause.
The statute before us upsets the federal balance to a degree that renders it an unconstitutional assertion of the commerce power, and our intervention is required. As the Chief Justice explains, unlike the earlier cases to come before the Court here neither the actors nor their conduct have a commercial character, and neither the purposes nor the design of the statute have an evident commercial nexus. The statute makes the simple possession of a gun within 1,000 feet of the grounds of the school a criminal offense. In a sense, any conduct in this interdependent world of ours has an ultimate commercial origin or consequence, but we have not yet said the commerce power may reach so far. If Congress attempts that extension, then at the least we must inquire whether the exercise of national power seeks to intrude upon an area of traditional state concern.
If a State or municipality determines that harsh criminal sanctions are necessary and wise to deter students from carrying guns on school premises, the reserved powers of the States are sufficient to enact those measures. Indeed, over 40 States already have criminal laws outlawing the possession of firearms on or near school grounds."
In the case of Bond v. United States, a woman was convicted of trying to poison her husband's mistress. (24 times over several months). He had had a child with the mistress while still married to Bond. The government tried to convict her under a federal statute designed to go after terrorists and so she sued, claiming that she should have been convicted under an applicable state criminal statute. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held that Bond lacked standing to challenge the statute. The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, held that a criminal defendant who has been convicted under a federal statute can challenge that conviction on grounds that the statute is unconstitutional. In this particular case, the Court held that the statute exceeded the federal government's powers with respect to the Tenth Amendment. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion:
"The federal system rests on what might at first seem a counter-intuitive insight, that “freedom is enhanced by the creation of two governments, not one.” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 758 (1999). The Framers concluded that allocation of powers between the National Government and the States enhances freedom, first by protecting the integrity of the governments themselves, and second by protecting the people, from whom all governmental powers are derived.
The principles of limited national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined. While neither originates in the Tenth Amendment, both are expressed by it. Impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within the enumerated powers of the National Government, see New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), at 155–159, and action that exceeds the National Government’s enumerated powers undermines the sovereign interests of States. See United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 564 (1995). The unconstitutional action can cause concomitant injury to persons in individual cases.
Federalism has more than one dynamic. It is true that the federal structure serves to grant and delimit the prerogatives and responsibilities of the States and the National Government vis-à-vis one another. The allocation of powers in our federal system preserves the integrity, dignity, and residual sovereignty of the States. The federal balance is, in part, an end in itself, to ensure that States function as political entities in their own right.
But that is not its exclusive sphere of operation. Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity. “State sovereignty is not just an end in itself: Rather, federalism secures to citizens the liberties that derive from the diffusion of sovereign power.
Some of these liberties are of a political character. The federal structure allows local policies 'more sensitive to the diverse needs of a heterogeneous society,' permits 'innovation and experimentation,' enables greater citizen 'involvement in democratic processes,' and makes government 'more responsive by putting the States in competition for a mobile citizenry.' [All of these would protect and enlarge individual liberty and protect against an oppressive "one-size-fits-all" approach].
Federalism secures the freedom of the individual. It allows States to respond, through the enactment of positive law, to the initiative of those who seek a voice in shaping the destiny of their own times without having to rely solely upon the political processes that control a remote central power. True, of course, these objects cannot be vindicated by the Judiciary in the absence of a proper case or controversy; but the individual liberty secured by federalism is not simply derivative of the rights of the States.
Federalism also protects the liberty of all persons within a State by ensuring that laws enacted in excess of delegated governmental power cannot direct or control their actions. [See ibid]. By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power. When government acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake.
The limitations that federalism entails are not therefore a matter of rights belonging only to the States. States are not the sole intended beneficiaries of federalism. An individual has a direct interest in objecting to laws that upset the constitutional balance between the National Government and the States when the enforcement of those laws causes injury that is concrete, particular, and redressable. Fidelity to principles of federalism is not for the States alone to vindicate."
The outcome of this historic case against the massively oppressive healthcare reform bill will no doubt shape the legacy of the Roberts’ Court, influence President Obama's re-election prospects, and potentially deepen the ideological rift that is already dividing the country. But most importantly, the outcome will determine what impact the US Constitution still has on protecting the individual from the pernicious reaches of government.
References:
United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995). Referenced at: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-1260.ZO.html
Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. ___ (2010).
"Anthony A. Kennedy," NY Times, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/anthony_m_kennedy/index.html
Transcript and Audio for Monday's Arguments: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74477.html
Transcript and Audio for Tuesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/27/149465820/transcript-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-the-individual-mandate
Transcript and Audio for Wednesday's Arguments: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/28/149548299/transcript-audio-supreme-court-the-health-care-law-and-medicaid-expansion
Audio for Tuesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/Hft6z3
Audio for Wednesday's arguments: http://apne.ws/GX1p23
(morning) and http://apne.ws/GXdZOP (afternoon).
"The Supreme Court Arguments Are Over - What Happens Now?," Kaiser Health News, March 29, 2012. Referenced at: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2012/March/29/supreme-court-big-picture-wrap-up.aspx
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