To Save ObamaCare, Obama Does Full Court Press

 

IBDEditorials.com

Checks And Balances: A president with no respect for the Constitution warns of judicial activism by a Supreme Court reviewing his landmark legislation's constitutionality. It would be unconstitutional to let it stand.

Someone will have to remind President Obama the Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government, part of a system of checks and balances designed to rein in precisely the kind of runaway government exhibited by his administration. Our community-organizer-in-chief has a different opinion.

"Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," Obama said at a news conference with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

Is this the same Congress Obama has pledged to go around through executive orders and regulations?

This is precisely what the Supreme Court is designed to do — determine the constitutionality of laws passed by democratically elected legislatures and Congress.

Surely the constitutional law professor has heard of Marbury v. Madison, the 1802 case that formed the basis for the exercise of judicial review in the United States under Article III of the Constitution. It was also the first time in Western history a court invalidated a law by declaring it "unconstitutional."

Such an action is not unprecedented. The court has invalidated at least two laws for violating the Commerce Clause in the last 20 years, and ObamaCare, with its unprecedented invocation of the Commerce Clause to force Americans to buy health care or pay a penalty, would qualify. By one estimate, the Supreme Court has struck down 53 laws between 1981 and 2005 alone.

The president speaks of a law passed by a "democratically elected Congress" yet it was a bill no one had read and which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said we had to pass to find out what was in it. The fact is, most of the rules and regulations are written by unelected bureaucrats authorized by a bill that refers not to "we the people" but to "the secretary shall determine."

The law's Independent Payment Advisory Board, with its power to decide what health care will be available and who gets it, is just one example of how the future of the American people will be determined not by their representatives but by unelected bureaucrats.

In January, the president showed his respect for law and the Constitution when he illegally appointed Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, along with three appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, all without Senate approval as the Constitution requires.