FARIA: OBAMACARE – POLITICS AND CONSTITUTIONALITY

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/2012/03/20/faria-obamacare-politics-and-constitutionality/?subscriber=1

GOPUSA – Miguel A. Faria, Jr. MD – 3/20/2012

This long article gives a history of attempts at “health care reform.”

Violating the U.S. Constitution to Justify ObamaCare

The U.S. Constitution, unlike the constitutions in other countries or other forms of government, limits the power of the federal government to specifically enumerated powers. Powers that are not specifically granted by the constitution are not authorized. Additionally, the first Ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, enshrined as the Bill of Rights, even forbid Congress from passing laws restricting individual freedom.

It has been stated that the "Welfare Clause" in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to distribute entitlements and to redistribute wealth in the form of socialism. But in discussing this clause, Thomas Jefferson wrote, "a distinct substantive power, to do any act which might tend to the general welfare, is to render all the enumerations [of their specific constitutional powers] useless, and to make their power unlimited."

And James Madison, the “Father of the U.S. Constitution,” in a letter to fellow patriot Edmund Pendleton dated January 21, 1792, wrote: "[If] Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." In other words, there is no authorization in the U.S. Constitution for the implementation of socialism in America.

Likewise, our constitution does not authorize the federal government to take over the U.S. health care system. To legally justify the implementation of ObamaCare, particularly the section that forces American citizens to buy health care coverage, congressional democrats and the president have used the (interstate) commerce clause of the constitution (that empowers congress to regulate the interstate commerce among the individual states of the nation).

Again, this "broad construction" (interpretation) of the constitution is tantamount to a usurpation of power that would erase the limits of authority set for the federal government by the framers of our constitution. Nor have specific contravening amendments been passed to legally alter those constitutional limits.

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