Pretty general article, though it’s written with respect to HCR. Worth a read.
cliffs?
Will read tomorrow. But to fill Bing in, the Commerce Clause allows the US Federal Government to regulate commerce among states, Indian tribes and foreign countries.
The US constitution limits the Federal Government to only specific “enumerated powers.” Seriously, there are only 19 (IIRC) specific things our government is allowed to do. One of which is the power to regulate interstate commerce. That one in particular gets abused over and over again because you can argue that just about anything can effect the economy in a different state. Until now, that has only been interepreted to mean that it can say “no you can’t do that, buy that, or sell that.” Obamacare is saying you have to buy that (insurance) because if you don’t buy insurance now you will just be a liaibility on the economy later. Forcing someone to engage in commerce rather than just allowing or not allowing commerce is a stretch that a lot of people see as abuse of federal power and is why the law is on its way to the Supreme Court.
The only other way to make this legit would be though the tax system and use the Feds power to tax, but that’s a problem too. While 2 judges have upheld the law and 2 have struck it down, all of them have said in one way or another that because the government (like Obama in the video below with Stephanopoulos) “sold” the health care law by saying it was NOT a tax, they can’t just turn around now and say they have the right to implement this law because they have the right to tax.
I still haven’t read your link Fry, lol.
Hopefully Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, or Alito gets hit by a truck from one of the corporations that they never seem to find any wrongdoing by, before this makes it up that high. This politicized Supreme Court is a disgrace to America and I suspect they would pull another Bush v Gore/Citizens United to help the Republican Party.
I’d like to see the supreme court actually stand up for the Constitution. They haven’t done much of that since FDR.
Here’s the law that the left says lets them tax someone for not buying insurance:
The opposition says that this part of the bill
SEC. 1501. REQUIREMENT TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE.
(a) Findings- Congress makes the following findings:
(1) IN GENERAL- The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section (in this subsection referred to as the `requirement’) is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2).
(2) EFFECTS ON THE NATIONAL ECONOMY AND INTERSTATE COMMERCE- The effects described in this paragraph are the following:
(A) The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased.
(B) Health insurance and health care services are a significant part of the national economy. National health spending is projected to increase from $2,500,000,000,000, or 17.6 percent of the economy, in 2009 to $4,700,000,000,000 in 2019. Private health insurance spending is projected to be $854,000,000,000 in 2009, and pays for medical supplies, drugs, and equipment that are shipped in interstate commerce. Since most health insurance is sold by national or regional health insurance companies, health insurance is sold in interstate commerce and claims payments flow through interstate commerce.
(C) The requirement, together with the other provisions of this Act, will add millions of new consumers to the health insurance market, increasing the supply of, and demand for, health care services. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the requirement will increase the number and share of Americans who are insured.
(D) The requirement achieves near-universal coverage by building upon and strengthening the private employer-based health insurance system, which covers 176,000,000 Americans nationwide. In Massachusetts, a similar requirement has strengthened private employer-based coverage: despite the economic downturn, the number of workers offered employer-based coverage has actually increased.
(E) Half of all personal bankruptcies are caused in part by medical expenses. By significantly increasing health insurance coverage, the requirement, together with the other provisions of this Act, will improve financial security for families.
(F) Under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (29 U.S.C. 1001 et seq.), the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 201 et seq.), and this Act, the Federal Government has a significant role in regulating health insurance which is in interstate commerce.
(G) Under sections 2704 and 2705 of the Public Health Service Act (as added by section 1201 of this Act), if there were no requirement, many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care. By significantly increasing health insurance coverage, the requirement, together with the other provisions of this Act, will minimize this adverse selection and broaden the health insurance risk pool to include healthy individuals, which will lower health insurance premiums. The requirement is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold.
(H) Administrative costs for private health insurance, which were $90,000,000,000 in 2006, are 26 to 30 percent of premiums in the current individual and small group markets. By significantly increasing health insurance coverage and the size of purchasing pools, which will increase economies of scale, the requirement, together with the other provisions of this Act, will significantly reduce administrative costs and lower health insurance premiums. The requirement is essential to creating effective health insurance markets that do not require underwriting and eliminate its associated administrative costs.
(3) SUPREME COURT RULING- In United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Association (322 U.S. 533 (1944)), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that insurance is interstate commerce subject to Federal regulation.
Doesn’t justify the individual mandate as being provided for in this enumerated power:
Section 8 - Powers of Congress
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;…
Hey, hey, hey Joe, age of civility remember? 
Buying something is to commerce as not buying something is to __________.
Come on Joe, you almost aced your SAT’s right? Is this the question you missed?
so how do they force you to buy car insurance?
is the loop hole the fact that you have to buy a car and the require for insurance is implicit?
if that’s the case then been alive requires health insurance… if you dont want it, dead yourself.
on an unrelated topic, interstate commerce… has anyone ever speculated as the lost tax dollars from on-line interstate spending?
i pay no tax on anything i order from Texas, Florida, Cali to my NY box… no federal sales tax is both awesome and a complete catastrophe
The Federal Government doesn’t force us to buy car insurance, the State Government does. Massachusetts for example has a form of “universal care.”
Yeah. If you are going to drive, then you have to carry car insurance. It’s a bit different from If you are going to breathe, then you have to carry health insurance. Of course even then libertarians will argue that you shouldn’t have to register or insure a car. I wouldn’t want to explain it to every cop and fight all the tickets, but apparently if you pay cash outright for a car you can request its certificate of origin rather than its title and then you aren’t legally obligated to register it. But I digress.
I say the bill needs to be ammended, not repealed. There’s a lot of good in it, but the individual mandate sets a precedent for unlimited federal power. If you say Congress can regulate inaction because it affects commerce then I really can’t think of any limit to congress’s power under the commerce clause.
I have long thought that the interstate commerce clause was way overused. That said, there are way worse oversteps. They used it to regulate subsistence farming, or more recently to prevent people from growing their own weed, for use by themselves, in their own homes, in their own states, based on the interstate commerce clause. The decision to buy or not buy health insurance, to me, is still commerce under that standard because inevitably people need some type of health care, and once they do then it’s certainly qualified. Short of people who are delivered at home, get no vaccinations, remain perfectly healthy, and then suddenly drop dead, everyone engages in this form of commerce. The premise of the whole health care reform act is that the health care market is a unique one unlike any other, and if treated as such does not set any precedent for future overreaches.
The federal government already does this sort of thing all the time, but they qualify it as being related to “privileges.” The most recent one is passports. They don’t force you to buy one from them, but they won’t give you the privilege of being allowed to come home without it.
None of this would have been an issue if we would have just gotten the damn public option. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security are all constitutional because the gov’t administers them. You call it a health insurance tax, enroll them in a plan, boom. The bill won’t be amended unless the Dems somehow managed to get back to 60 Senate seats and retake the house in 2012, along with an Obama re-election. Maybe not the 60 seats if they can shoehorn it in as budget reconciliation. The teabagger base and Republicans in Congress hate this thing too much to be reasonable and work with it. If it goes down, it dies.
Yeah well three wrongs don’t make a right. Haha in this discussion neither do three lefts, or 60 lefts.
So is that how this works? If the supreme court rules that congress can’t regulate not-engaging-in-commerce then the whole bill gets struck down?
It’s based on the context of the decision they rule on. The last judge was a hardcore righty and he struck down the whole thing on the grounds that the mandate was inseperable from the rest of the bill. Other than that so far we’ve had two constitutionals and one that just struck down the clause. That’s why the right is trying to fast track this thing to the Supreme Court now, so that if they uphold the judge’s decision the whole thing goes down. If it goes to a circuit court or something in between and just that clause gets struck down, like the first judge who ruled against it, we’d have an upcoming mandate for insurance companies not to charge extra for pre-existing conditions, but no incentive for non-sick people to buy health insurance. Then they would be all about reaching a compromise or their friends in big insurance would be out of business.
My reason for the Supreme Court hate is this court’s opinion of the interstate commerce clause has pretty much depended on if it was a left or right wing cause. From 1937 to 1995, not a single piece of legislation was struck down as exceeding the limits of the Commerce Clause. When it was the DC gun ban, they struck it down. When the case of the guy who grew his own medical MJ came up after that, they ruled that the gov’t had regulation power and straight up conflicted with their last decision. When the Violence Against Women act came up after that which allowed women to sue their abusers in civil court even in the absence of criminal charges against them, left wing cause, they struck it down.
Well that’s delightfully inconsistent.
How the hell did they convince themselves that something you grow and consume within a 100 yard area is interstate commerce? Based on that I guess they’ve already decided that anything can effect the economy and so anything can be regulated by congress under interstate commerce and so nothing is outside their control. I guess our only hope is that, as you explained, they give no creedence to stare decisis.
I thought it sounded funny when Bush talked in his book about appointing strict constructionists of the constution like himself. “Uhh, what? Have you ever actually read the constitution?”
i want to sit quietly and eat a decent meal at the table with you two but not participate in the conversation at all.
lol OK we’ll meet at Founding Fathers in Buffalo.
They have free popcorn and nachos and good booze. I’m in.
In the eyes of some state and federal legislators, the sales tax that is not being collected by many online merchants is revenue that could help stem the bleeding of state treasuries.
i will negatively affect me pretty significantly if i have to pay interstate taxes on my purchases from FL and TX but man i cant believe no one has made a push for this in the past. Billions in tax revenue gone unobtained on an annual basis.