Ensign, DeMint to Force Vote on Health Care Bill Unconstitutionality

[thundley4]

December 22, 2009 - WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and John Ensign (R-Nevada), raised a Constitutional Point of Order on the Senate floor against the Democrat health care takeover bill on behalf of the Steering Committee, a caucus of conservative senators. The Senate will vote tomorrow on the bill’s constitutionality.

“I am incredibly concerned that the Democrats’ proposed individual mandate provision takes away too much freedom and choice from Americans across the country,” said Senator Ensign. “As an American, I felt the obligation to stand up for the individual freedom of every citizen to make their own decision on this issue. I don’t believe Congress has the legal authority to force this mandate on its citizens.”

“Forcing every American to purchase a product is absolutely inconsistent with our Constitution and the freedoms our Founding Fathers hoped to protect,” said Senator DeMint. “This is not at all like car insurance, you can choose not to drive but Americans will have no choice whether to buy government-approved insurance. This is nothing more than a bailout and takeover of insurance companies. We’re forcing Americans to buy insurance under penalty of law and then Washington bureaucrats will then dictate what these companies can sell to Americans. This is not liberty, it is tyranny of good intentions by elites in Washington who think they can plan our lives better than we can.”

Americans who fail to buy health insurance, according to the Democrats’ bill, would be subject to financial penalties. The senators believe the bill is unconstitutional because the insurance mandate is not authorized by any of the limited enumerated powers granted to the federal government. The individual mandate also likely violates the “takings” clause of the 5th Amendment.

The Democrats’ healthcare reform bill requires Americans to buy health insurance “whether or not they ever visit a doctor, get a prescription or have an operation.” If an American chooses not to buy health insurance coverage, they will face rapidly increasing taxes that will rise to $750 or 2% of their taxable income, whichever is greater.

The Congressional Budget Office once stated “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

A legal study by scholars at the nonpartisan Heritage Foundation concluded: “An individual mandate to enter into a contract with or buy a particular product from a private party, with tax penalties to enforce it, is unprecedented-- not just in scope but in kind--and unconstitutional as a matter of first principles and under any reasonable reading of judicial precedents.” 

demint.senate.gov

I wonder if this the way to go or if it would be better to challenge the whole law on this grounds after Lord Zero signs it.

[Oceander]

demint.senate.gov

I wonder if this the way to go or if it would be better to challenge the whole law on this grounds after Lord Zero signs it.

Better to have this at least started; it would certainly serve to help undercut any argument that the Congress could have had a rational basis for this b.s. if the unconstitutionality of it had been made clear beyond peradventure to them before they voted for it.

[bkg]

posturing at this point, IMHO.

but I'm cynical on all politicians (except Michell Bachmann).

[Ralph Wiggum]

...A legal study by scholars at the nonpartisan Heritage Foundation...

While I wholeheartedly support Senators DeMint & Ensign...I can't totally agree that Heritage is non-partisan.

[5412]

demint.senate.gov

I wonder if this the way to go or if it would be better to challenge the whole law on this grounds after Lord Zero signs it.

Hi,

Yesterday idiot Reed said that a midwest snowstorm is coming and he had hoped they could move up the time table to vote.   Anything to slow down the process is good.  That does not mean that some group......really should be the ACLU.....but won't be,should file a class action suit and demand an injunction until the Supreme Court can declare the constitutionality.  My guess is that suit could not be filed until it passed.

regards,
5412

[JohnnyReb]

Well, at least one of my senators is trying to do something...got his head screwed on straight. The other one, Lindsay Graham, has left handed threads .....and those have been cross threaded.

[rich_t]

Since when has congress given a damn about the constituionality of the laws they pass?

The majority of those laws do NOT fall within their enumerated powers to begin with.

Now all of a sudden they are concerned?

I call bullshit.

I bet I wouldn't have to look too hard to find legislation that the two senators mentioned voted to support that were beyond the powers granted to the Congress by the Constitution.

If I sound bitter, it's because I am.  I think both parties suck and have for decades.

[DumbAss Tanker]

It's symbolic, since the Dems have the votes locked in to vote that it is Constitutional whether it really is or not.  I have equal reservations about the Nebraska deal's Constitutionality under the Equal Protection clause.

[bkg]

It's symbolic, since the Dems have the votes locked in to vote that it is Constitutional whether it really is or not.  I have equal reservations about the Nebraska deal's Constitutionality under the Equal Protection clause.

14th amendment doesn't exist anymore.

[DumbAss Tanker]

It certainly seems that way right now, but the harm Congress can do in a month in defying it usually takes years to unwind in the courts.  I'm not writing it off as a total dead letter until the courts have their shot at it.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

rich_t, bkg,

I understand your frustration and in priniple it seems as if the rule of law has gone by the wayside but consider:

* even the worst of tyrants hide behind cloaks of legitmate legal authority. Why do you think Chavez, the just deposed idiot from Honduras, the Castro brothers and the Iranian mullahs hold elections and referendums? We need to force the issue of law over and over again to compel these cretins to embarrass themselves or abandon what embarrasses them.

* the temptation to grab our shootin' irons and head to the mountains is strong. My gawd I want to knock on my senators' office doors and pitch a gallon of red paint into the office. I know, I feel it. But even if we did we would need to proclaim what we're fighting for. We aren't fighting for something new, merely the preservation of what already is. Keep talking about the rule of law and what those laws are. Things will turn our way. It isn't if, but when.

[bkg]

Here's the problem as I see it.

this will go to SCOTUS, who will uphold it as constitutional due to political pressure.

[DefiantSix]

Here's the problem as I see it.

this will go to SCOTUS, who will uphold it as constitutional due to political pressure.

Which opens up a can of worms only the radicals like the Øbamessiah want opened.

[bkg]

Which opens up a can of worms only the radicals like the Øbamessiah want opened.

Exactly. As soon as it's found Constitutional, then the real agenda starts....

[thundley4]

Here's the problem as I see it.

this will go to SCOTUS, who will uphold it as constitutional due to political pressure.

The USSC decision will come down split along party lines with milquetoasts siding with the left.

[DefiantSix]

Exactly. As soon as it's found Constitutional, then the real agenda starts....

Out of pure, morbid curiosity, I wonder what argument the USSC will use to justify it's constitutionality.  Without using the terms directly, the Founders have already come straight out and said that Socialism/Marxism/Fascism are patently unconstitutional:

to whit:

“The utopian schemes of leveling ("redistribution of wealth", in the common vernacular) and a community of goods (Federal control/ownership of property and/or the means of production),  are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.”

-- Samuel Adams

[Oceander]

It's symbolic, since the Dems have the votes locked in to vote that it is Constitutional whether it really is or not.  I have equal reservations about the Nebraska deal's Constitutionality under the Equal Protection clause.

The Congress does not have the final say-so on whether a law is constitutional or not.  There are certain strains of extremely far-left legal theory that, for patently obvious political reasons, posit that someone other than the Supreme Court should have final say-so; however, those doctrines are not law.  What is the law comes to us from the ancient Supreme Court case of Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803), wherein the Supreme Court stated:

It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department [the judicial branch] to say what the law is.  Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret that rule.  If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each.

So, if a law [e.g., a statute or treaty] be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case.  This is of the very essence of judicial duty.  If, then, the Courts are to regard the Constitution, and the Constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the Legislature, the Constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

Those, then, who controvert the principle that the Constitution is to be considered in court as a paramount law are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the Constitution, and see only the law [e.g., the statute or treaty].

This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions.

Thus, no vote of the Congress as to whether or not a piece of legislation is constitutional will have any binding effect on the courts or their ability to review and, if necessary, void the Obamacare abomination.

[NHSparky]

Vote just in.  Failed on a party-line vote, 39-60.

[thundley4]

I wonder if this came up yet?

This afternoon around 3:00 p.m., Senators Ensign and DeMint will force the Senate to vote on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the health care bill. Along the way, Senator DeMint just pulled another trick out of his hat.

He is going to ask the Senate to suspend its rules and consider another amendment to the health care bill.

That will take a two-thirds vote of the Senate to consider.

And what is his amendment? It is similar to an amendment both Senators DeMint and Dick Durbin (D-IL) offered up to S.1, the ethics reform package that Congress considered in 2007. That amendment passed the Senate 98 to 0, but was then stripped out in closed-door negotiations before S.1 was passed by the Congress.

The amendment would not apply to the health care bill, but would apply to all future legislation and would prohibit bribing Senators with earmarks in exchange for votes.

The amendment’s actually language reads:

(a) IN GENERAL.—It shall not be in order in the Senate to consider a congressionally directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit, if a Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner has conditioned the inclusion of language to provide funding for a congressional directed spending item, a limited tax benefit, or a limited tariff benefit in any amendment, bill, or joint resolution (or an accompanying report) or in any conference report on a bill or joint resolution (including an accompanying joint explanatory statement of managers) on any vote cast by any Senator, Member, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner.

Redstate

[Oceander]

Vote just in.  Failed on a party-line vote, 39-60.

Who was the missing Republican?

[DefiantSix]

Who was the missing Republican?

Maybe McLame wandered across the aisle - again - to fill in for some DimRat who was out sick.

[Oceander]

Maybe McLame wandered across the aisle - again - to fill in for some DimRat who was out sick.

I doubt it; that vote didn't mean anything really, so there would be no point for even him to be so blatantly stupid.

[DefiantSix]

I doubt it; that vote didn't mean anything really, so there would be no point for even him to be so blatantly stupid.

Except that he has developed a penchant of late for waving his private parts in the faces of Conservatives and Constitutionalists.

[Peter3_1]

As health insurance, or any insurance is mentioned, it is under the 10th amendment the feds cannot usurp it. The people and the states have jursidiction. And then there are the religions, like Christian Science, the Seven Day Adventists, the Amish who have strict limits on medical proceduers they may accept. Are we to take their money for a procedure by force for they cannot accept? Not to mention that the Constitution does not permit unequal taxation, this does it with the Conn., LA, CORNHUSKER exceptions.

Or are we a banana republic, in which an autocrat decides day to day what the "rule of law" is or is not?

[bkg]

As health insurance, or any insurance is mentioned, it is under the 10th amendment the feds cannot usurp it. The people and the states have jursidiction. And then there are the religions, like Christian Science, the Seven Day Adventists, the Amish who have strict limits on medical proceduers they may accept. Are we to take their money for a procedure by force for they cannot accept? Not to mention that the Constitution does not permit unequal taxation, this does it with the Conn., LA, CORNHUSKER exceptions.

Or are we a banana republic, in which an autocrat decides day to day what the "rule of law" is or is not?

Yes... we are and have been a banana republic for a long time through manipulation of the tax code.