What Would The Founders Say About the Constitutionality of Obama’s Healthcare Bill?
A Historic Time In America
The events in Washington the past few weeks that included protests on the West Front of the Capitol, a close vote for passage and then the President signing the healthcare bill into law marked a pivotal point in the history of America. While Fidel Castro and other socialist and communist leaders publically applauded the event, still other concerned groups and politicians officially began their legal efforts to have the legislation repealed on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. While I am certainly no constitutional expert or legal scholar, this bill strikes me, as it does millions of my fellow countrymen, as being at the least unconstitutional and at the greatest, a takeover by the federal government of a large portion of the private economy that moves our country more toward “defacto” socialism than any piece of legislation in recent history.
Constitutionality Debate Ensues
The debate and the legal actions to repeal the healthcare bill on the grounds that it is unconstitutional have begun in several venues. Senator Jim DeMint, R., S.C., has said he will introduce legislation on the floor of the Senate to have the bill declared unconstitutional and Attorneys General from many states have joined together to file a lawsuit to declare the bill unconstitutional. Meanwhile, learned scholars across the nation are appearing on radio and television and in the print media to give their viewpoints as to the constitutionality of this legislation. Proponents of the bill are solidifying around the points that, in addition to legal precedents, the Constitution, in the enumerated powers delineation in Article 1, Section 8 does grant the federal government the power “to lay and collect taxes,” and that the Constitution does grant the federal government the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes:” Opponents of the bill are arguing that, among other things, the Constitution does not give the federal government the power to mandate that citizens must purchase something(in this case a health insurance policy) or face fines or imprisonment.
What The Supreme Court Might Hear
While it is unclear how the legal proceedings in this issue will develop, if there ever was a case that deserved to be debated in the Supreme Court, it is this one. This $2 trillion dollar healthcare legislation is historic in that it gives the federal government the right to make decisions on what type of health insurance Americans can purchase, what the cost will be, and what procedures and pharmaceuticals Americans can access. This legislation expands health insurance to millions whom do not currently have insurance, raises the cost of existing health insurance for those who do have insurance, and in essence, brings the socialistic medicine model currently being experienced in countries like Great Britain and Canada, with their stories of unavailable or great wait times for procedures, lack of hospital bed space, rationing of services, and overworked medical staffs, to America. Does the Constitution give the federal government this power? After all, the federal government taxes businesses and individuals for many things that are not specifically mentioned in the Constitution such as taxes for retirement plans(Social Security), elderly healthcare(Medicare), healthcare for the poor(Medicaid), overseeing public schools(Department of Education) and paying for mortgages(Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae). Is the argument that the precedents and the taxing authority and the regulating commerce provision the correct Constitutional interpretation?
Thomas Jefferson’s Interpretation Of The Constitution
When researching the original intent of the Constitution, it helps to consult those who were there at the founding of our country. Founding father, author of the Declaration of Independence, and President of the United States Thomas Jefferson was perhaps the most astute political thinker and writer of the Revolutionary War era. His university, The University of Virginia, houses Mr. Jefferson’s extensive writings in his many letters and commentary over the years from our declaration of independence from Great Britain, through his service in the legislature, as President of the United States on through his founding of the university in Charlottesville. Mr. Jefferson would surely agree. As he stated, “On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it passed.”1 Gladly Mr. Jefferson. Context matters and is critical especially to a document designed as the Rule of Law for a country being formed with a disdain for an overbearing central government. In addition to context, Mr. Jefferson would side with interpretations that favored amendments in lieu of power grants to the federal government. He said “In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids.”2
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