Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” —Ronald Reagan
CNSNews posed a question to the power happy “capo” of Obama in the House of Representatives that illustrates the extent the left has shredded the Constitution to accomplish the power grab of Obama and the Democrats.
The following is a direct quote from a CNS reporter that asked what Constitutional authority the Congress had to demand that Americans buy health insurance or be fined.
CNSNews.com: “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”
Pelosi: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”
CNSNews.com: “Yes, yes I am.”
Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”
Currently, each of the five health care overhaul proposals being considered in Congress would command every American adult to buy health insurance. Any person defying this mandate would be required to pay a penalty to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 1994, when the health care reform plan then being advanced by President Clinton called for mandating that all Americans buy health insurance, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office studied the issue and concluded:
“The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
Later on Thursday, CNSNews.com followed up on the question it asked Speaker Pelosi by sending written questions for the speaker via e-mail to her Spokesman Elshami.
“Where specifically does the Constitution authorize Congress to force Americans to purchase a particular good or service such as health insurance?” CNSNews.com asked the speaker’s office.
“If it is the Speaker’s belief that there is a provision in the Constitution that does give Congress this power, does she believe the Constitution in any way limits the goods and services Congress can force an individual to purchase?” CNSNews.com asked. “If so, what is that limit?”
Elshami responded by sending CNSNews.com a Sept. 16 press release from the Speaker’s office entitled, “Health Insurance Reform, Daily Mythbuster: ‘Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.’” The press release states that Congress has “broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production.”
This is the most preposterous part of the contention/argument. Insurance company’s are presently forbidden to be domiciled in one state and sell in other states. That is what keeps the price of health insurance artificially high. If the Congress passed a law eliminating the provision that forbids a person in New York from buying a health insurance policy in any other state. This would create more competition and reduce the premium prices. There is no interstate commerce in health insurance now because of government prohibitions!
Further more, Doctors are licensed by the State not the Federal government. Where is the interstate commerce here?
The capitation clause of Article I of the United States Constitution, reads “[n]o capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” Capitation here means a tax of a uniform, fixed amount per taxpayer. Direct tax means a tax levied directly by the United States federal government on taxpayers, as opposed to a tax on events or transactions. The United States government levied direct taxes from time to time during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It levied direct taxes on the owners of houses, land, slaves, and estates in the late 1790s, but cancelled the taxes in 1802.
The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, outlawed the use of the poll tax (or any other tax) as a pre-condition in voting in Federal elections. The 1966 Supreme Court case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections extended this explicit enactment as a matter of judicial interpretation of a more general provision, ruling that the imposition of a poll tax in state elections violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Today we are facing a tax more heinous than a poll tax. WE all know that since the poll tax was abolished and made illegal, some (at times many) people still do not vote. Also, everybody does not get sick. Particularly the young adults who have not entered the years of debilitating and sometimes fatal diseases like hypertension, diabetes and cancer. Why should we force these people, who a large portion of the uninsured, to get insurance or be fined?
Americans who fail to sign up for a medical plan after health care overhaul takes effect could be hit with fines of up to $3,800, according to a new proposal circulated Tuesday by a senior Democrat.This would be included in the Baucus’s bill that is currently slated for a vote sometime before Christmas.
“A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action,” said a 1994 report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. “The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”
“An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique,” reads the report. “First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”
And the most odious thing about this whole fine,aka TAX, is that it would be the IRS that collects the fine! Not the state or federal law enforcement people or the courts. And there is another provision floating around Congress that the fine would be automatically taken out of a person’s bank account. What about those people who do no have $3,800 in their bank account. Will we once again establish Konzentrationslager /gulags or debtors prisons?
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