House Votes to Repeal Health-Care Overhaul

WASHINGTON — With the strokes of 22 pens, President Obama signed his landmark health care overhaul — the most expansive social legislation enacted in decades — into law on Tuesday, saying it enshrines “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

Repeal;

The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would repeal President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare reform law on Wednesday in a mostly symbolic move likely to be scuttled in the Senate.

The House voted 245-189 to approve the Republican bill that would scrap the law, which was passed by Congress last year after a bitter debate and signed by Obama when his fellow Democrats still controlled both the House and Senate.

The unified House Republicans were joined by three Democrats in backing the bill, which also needs Senate passage but is unlikely to get it. The Senate remains under Democratic control and is not expected to take up the repeal legislation.

Even if the Senate were to pass the measure, Obama has vowed to veto any effort to repeal the healthcare law, one of his biggest legislative victories.

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March 16, 2012

Letter from CCHF's President

What if the Supreme Court rules Obamacare constitutional? That's the question a legislator asked me during my testimony against the State of Minnesota enacting any law to create a government health insurance "exchange." I reminded him that Daniel Webster once said that decisions of constitutionality should not be left in the hands of six men in black robes.

Well I looked up the quote again and discovered that it was not Webster who said it. It was U.S. Senator John Taylor writing in the Virginia Resolve of 1798.

Specifically, Taylor wrote, "Being an essential principle for preserving theoretical liberty, used by the Federal constitution, it never could have designed to destroy it, by investing five or six men, installed for life, with a power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political departments [State and Federal governments], or at least of the most important."

Newt Gingrich says, "The constitutional judgments of the president and Congress are entitled to as much respect as those of the Court." And Thomas Jefferson stated in 1798, "The government created by this compact [the Constitution] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers..."

I also summarized for the legislator and the rest of the committee members what Virginia's Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli recently told POLITICO Pro (3/12/12). Mr. Cuccinelli suggested states could obstruct implementation by simply refusing to lift a finger to implement the law. He said, "It would be contrary to the law, yes [but] it's not like there's criminal penalties out there. It becomes a power struggle." In my testimony, I called it "a standoff."

In fact, South Dakota is already defying the federal law. They have issued regulations that directly violate the Obamacare ban on denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.

So far the U.S. Army hasn't been called in.

In response to the legislator's question, I also testified that if the Supreme Court rules the federal health care reform law to be constitutional, it will be a very interesting time in the history of our country. As you might imagine, that is an understatement.