Since the signing today of the health care reform bill, I have been reading comments by people on a number of different sites. I have taken particular note of those who agree with this bill and argue that the individual mandate is Constitutional. Often sighted as examples that it is Constitutional are the fact that we have Medicare and Medicaid, and Social Security. I even saw one poster use Civil Rights and Selective Service as examples. Clearly an individual who has little in the way of education and probably couldn’t tell you one thing about what the Constitution said. Now that I’ve gotten my frustration out on that poster I would like to use those examples to point out why supporters are wrong.
Medicare as you know is a program designed to help senior citizens with healthcare. It was challenged in the Courts and the Courts found it to be Constitutional as it helped the “General Welfare” of the United States. The Medicare tax is permissible under Article 1 Section 8 and the 16th Amendment to the United States (which did not create the income tax, we already had one before the 16th Amendment). The Federal Government can create just about any tax it wants under the Constitution. It’s our duty as citizens to oppose those taxes politically and vote out the people who pass them when we disagree with the tax. But here’s the thing; you don’t have to sign up for Medicare. There is no mandate that you sign up for Medicare. Medicare Part D has a late enrollment penalty, but still you don’t have to sign up.
Medicaid is a program that is administered by the States; but States don’t have to administer it. If they don’t administer it however, they lose matching Federal Funds. So again, it’s Constitutional, and you don’t have to sign up for Medicaid.
Social Security was actually created to get older workers out of the work force and into retirement to make way for younger workers. The tax is Constitutional, see my argument above on that. You don’t have to retire at 65, you don’t have to retire at all, and you don’t have to collect it if you don’t want it. Don’t file for it and you won’t get it.
Selective Service is the military draft that all men must register for when they reach the age of 18. Article one section 8 provides that Congress shall have power to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, to provide for calling forth the militia…, and to provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such parts of them as may be employed in the service of the United States. That means the congress can create the Selective Service.
As for Civil Rights, the government has a right to protect your rights of due process and equitable treatment, in order to keep the peace. But you don’t have to exercise your civil rights, though you would be foolish not to.
The Government doesn’t have the power to compel you to buy a product or enter into a contractual agreement for either the public good or in support of interstate commerce, and I’ve argued that in an earlier blog as to why. I still contend that if the government can order you about at will, that it is a threat to our freedom and liberty. We will no longer live in a republic; we will live under a tyrannical government that will feel compelled to watch you to make sure you comply with the law. The IRS will become the agent of enforcement.
So there is no way, based on the examples above, that an individual mandate to buy health insurance is Constitutional. It is my belief that anyone who believes the government has the power to order you to buy a product, or else, does not believe in individual freedom and liberty, which were two principles this nation was founded on. They are socialists. They are telling you that you don’t have freedom. That should scare you. This is almost Orwellian. The IRS is going to track, every month, whether or not you have health insurance? 1984 may not be as far away as it seems. Heck Joe Biden has already tried to change history by suggesting Iraq would be the Administration’s greatest achievement.
The “General Welfare” clause was never meant to give this much power to the government. When the Constitution was drafted, people attacked this clause as giving too much power to the government. A favorite passage of mine in the Federalist Papers is one in Federalist 41. “It has been urged and echoed, that the 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,’ amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alledged to be necessary for the common defence or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labour for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.” What James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, is saying is that the “General Welfare” clause does not give the government unlimited power.
He went on to say. “Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expression just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some colour for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms ‘to raise money for the general welfare.”
If the “General Welfare” clause of the Constitution gives the Congress unlimited power to do what it wishes then James Madison either lied to the people of New York, or he was flat out wrong. Would you dare to try and argue that one of the principle authors of the Constitution was wrong about the “General Welfare” clause? And if he lied, then the Constitution was passed through deceit and the States need to amend the Constitution to restore the balance of power between the States and the National Government.
It’s my firm belief that if the States fail to overturn this law in the Courts, then they must be prepared to defend the freedoms of its citizens any way that it can. The Founding Fathers, like James Madison knew that in order for the government to become tyrannical, all three branches of government must be in agreement and the States and the people must become subservient to them. The Founding Fathers believed that the States and the people would not allow that to happen. We must preserve that belief and remind people that power of the Federal Government comes from the States and the people, not the other way around.
Extremus.
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