Pirate's Cove

So far, Liberals have been attempting to position who’s to blame if the Mandate falls, and the blame doesn’t include “it’s unconstitutional” and “people really hated it.” They’ve also pushing the notion that if the Mandate is ruled stupid, er, unconstitutional, then single payer should be instituted, what I think of as the “if you hate the current health destruction law passed in 2010, just wait till we ram this overbearing notion down your throat for “your own good”” defense. They has also been some talking points, mostly occurring in blog posts and the comments, where liberals breathlessly want to know if the Medicare and Social Security taxes are unconstitutional. Now we get: Supreme Court health care debate: If the law fails, what’s next?

The Supreme Court has yet to rule on President Barack Obama’s health care law, but court watchers already are handicapping the domino effect if it falls.

If the justices knock out key parts of the law or bring down the whole thing, the reverberations could be felt across the legal landscape for generations to come, radically reining in the scope of federal power, according to supporters of the law and others who closely track the high court.

Got that? The Central Government staying within it’s Constitutional boundaries and withing the scope of what is laid out within the standards the Framers meant it to stay within is “radical”. I wonder what tune the mostly Leftist media would sing, and, in this case, the Politico’s Josh Gerstein, if the Central Government decided to expand their power to the media? Laws that start infringing on the freedom of the press.

And if the justices decide the individual mandate is a constitutional overreach, these observers say, federal labor and environmental laws could be the next on the firing line.

“Could” be. Nobody is really talking about them at this time, but, they “could” be. Much like the temperature of the Earth “could” spike 10 degrees F and the seas “could” rise 30 feet. This kind of talk is obviously meant to whip Democrats up into a (higher) frenzy, because Republicans have no problem with reigning in many of the labor and environmental laws that go well beyond the scope of what the federal government’s powers should be.

Another proponent of the law, Simon Lazarus of the National Senior Citizens Law Center, has made some of the most attention-grabbing predictions, arguing that throwing out the legislation would usher in a return of the Lochner era. That’s a period early in the 20th Century when the Supreme Court invalidated various economic regulations, including minimum wage laws and measures requiring employers to allow unions.

“Is the court going to become a dedicated foe of all manner of social legislation?” Lazarus asked. “If anything amounts to micromanaging rational choices by Congress, it’s this. Everyone acknowledges that it’s well within Congress’s power to regulate the health care market. … For a court to find a way to overturn that, second-guess that choice, I can’t think of a more radical transformation. The court would be basically reneging on the judicial restraint commitment it made in 1937-38 during the Roosevelt era.”

No, not everyone acknowledges Congress’s power to regulate the health care market, at least not as it is doing it. Nor does everyone agree with the overbearing social legislation, which is best left to the States and the People, per the Constitution. Yes, some legislation is good and proper, and is for the benefit of the entire country. The Civil Rights Law. Equal pay for equal work. Workplace safety standards. National environmental standards. And many more. It’s when the government oversteps their mandate and powers, particularly for political gain, that the problem occurs. When the federal government over-reaches. Like with Obamacare. Like, say, environmental and other regs that restrict water use to save fish while farms are left without, causing drought, hardship, and loss of jobs. Labor interference with a companies decision to move a plant to a “right to work state”. Giving preferential treatment to one segment of the population over another, violating the equal protection clauses.

While the likely impact of the court striking down the individual mandate is hotly disputed, there seems to be a broader consensus that a Supreme Court ruling tossing out the health law’s expansion of Medicaid would have more profound and direct consequences. Even some Republicans who opposed the overall bill say such a ruling would create major doubts about federal efforts to impose conditions on everything from highway funds to education programs.

“If the Supreme Court accepts the states’ argument, a host of constitutional questions will surround the operation of many federal funding streams to the states,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said on the Senate floor late last year of the Medicaid provision. “It would be difficult to overstate the significance of such a ruling.”

Good, there should be questions. The Framers, and the Constitution, never intended for the Federal government to have such massive power except in certain areas as laid out in the Constitution. Even when passed, the country itself was bigger than most old world countries. Certainly bigger than the European countries. Which is one reason why so much power was left in the hands of the State governments and The People. During the First Congress, each Representative represented 33,000 citizens on average. That number is now almost 698,000 per Representative. Not very representative, eh?

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.