In order to make some kind of point about the supposed "Unconstitutionality" of Health Care reform and the individual mandate, a South Carolina Dakota State Senator has proposed a bill to require that every person in the state be required to purchase a firearm.
"If the federal government can order every one of us to buy health insurance because we need medical care, it makes just as much sense for us to require everyone to have a weapon to provide for their protection," the lead sponsor, state Rep. Hal Wick (R), told the Rapid City Journal.
This is the kind of argument we've heard from the likes of Ann Coulter who says if Health Reform is found Constitution by the SCOTUS, then Congress should mandate everyone buy a gun and a bible.
Unfortunately for of them, one of the Founders actually did implement exactly that kind of mandate.
Now, Rep Wick doesn't literally support the idea that every adult man and woman should be required to buy a gun, but he's put forth the idea simply try and make the Health Care Individual Mandate look ridiculous.
The irony of course it that George Washington actually did implement exactly that type of mandate with the Militia Act of 1792.
That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act.
...
That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder;
With this in mind Eric Kleefeld at TalkingPointsMemo decided to call up Rep. Wilk and ask him about it.
So I called Wick, to ask his opinion. He affirmed to me that his bill is about making a statement. "The bill is really about Obamacare, and the fact that it's unconstitutional."
Does he think a gun mandate and the health care mandate are the same thing, I asked? "Yes," he responded.
I then asked him whether he had opinion on the gun mandate that was signed into law by Washington in 1792. "I wasn't aware of it," he said after a short pause. "Is it still on the books or has it been removed?"
Face Palm!
I explained that the Militia Acts were amended many times over the course of this country's history, and this provision was phased out a long time ago.
In the course of the interview, I asked whether this would change his opinion on individual mandates. "No," he said. "I really don't feel like a gun mandate would be constitutional under these circumstances."
What does he mean by the circumstances?
"Well, it was shortly after the Revolutionary War, and it was before the War of 1812," he said, "which may have been something that was on the radar screen -- that they knew there could be another challenge coming from overseas. I'm not a history major, though."
So simply because there might be a need for the militia because of the likelihood of a future war - which didn't occur for another 20 years - this guy thought Washington's law was ok, but there's always the potential that the country could be attacked in 20 years, just as their always the potential that someone might need Health Care during that time too.
Also it should be noted that this mandate was even more onerous because Washington didn't offer subsidies for the purchase of a weapon, and he didn't offer exemptions and waivers if that weapon was still too costly the way that the Health Care Bill does.
Let's also point out that another founders, James Adams, also actually signed a Health Care Mandate into law while he was President with "An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen."
The law authorized the creation of a government operated marine hospital service and mandated that privately employed sailors be required to purchase health care insurance. [...]
If a ship's captain did not fully pay a tax to cover for the coverage of all of his sailors accurately - he could be fined.
Funny that the GOP hates the mandate so much since it was their idea in the first place, and was only included in the bill to attract Republican Votes. In 2004 the Heritage Foundation Championed the Idea.
Besides that, getting back to Coulter, exactly what studies show that owning a gun and a bible is more beneficial than having Health Care? 45,000 people a year die prematurely because they don't have Health Care while a bit more than half of that number 28,000 are killed by guns every year.
It's not reasonable to think that owning a gun would reduce those deaths to zero, particularly since many of those people are shot by their own weapons - but providing Health Care could definitely prolong the lives of most of those who are currently dying without it.
On the Constitutionality question the decision is so far split with two judge ruling that the Mandate is Constitutional and two ruling that it isn't. Not that they've all gotten the same amount of press coverage.
The first Judge to rule the mandate Unconstitutional argued that the mandate is incorrectly labelled by the law as a "Tax", because previous versions of the bill labelled it as a penalty.
Hudson said the law’s final language deceptively labels the penalty a tax, after it had been called a penalty in draft language just hours before the final bill was passed on Christmas Eve last year. The distinction between penalty and tax became a sticking point because the Constitution grants the federal government wide latitude to impose taxes, but a penalty would amount to regulation of commerce across state lines in violation of the Constitution.
Throughout the debates, Democrats in Congress and Obama said it wasn’t a tax in part because that would have violated his pledge not to raise taxes against middle-class Americans. The administration changed its tune to back its legal arguments for the individual mandate, but the judge didn’t buy it.
"This Court’s analysis begins with the unequivocal denials [during the debate] by the Executive and legislative branches that the [law] was a tax," Hudson wrote.
It would seem to me that what actually was in the law should count more than what isn't in the law - or otherwise he could rule based on the Public Option, which was ultimately replaced in the bill.
The latest judge in Florida, ruled against it because he said that those who do not engage in commerce by not purchasing Health Insurance have no impact on commerce when that demonstrably isn't true.
The judge also made this amazing argument.
But this too is an argument that he rejects. “If impact [of the uninsured] on interstate commerce were to be expressed and calculated mathematically, the status of being uninsured would necessarily be represented by zero. Of course, any other figure multiplied by zero is also zero. Consequently, the impact must be zero, and of no effect on interstate commerce.” Caring for the uninsured, in other words, is free and creates no cost shifts throughout the system.
Nothing from Nothing, leaves Nothing?
The cost of caring for the uninsured does cost something as there already is a mandate on health providers to give them care anyway. Those costs, according to testimony before congress today, range from 3% - 12% of operating costs for some providers and can increase premiums from $450 for individuals to $1500 for families per year.
Judge Vinson also argued that those who argue against the law are making the same view as those who staged the Original Boston Tea Party.
If it has the power to compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction with a third party merely by asserting — as was done in the Act — that compelling the actual transaction is itself “commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce” [see Act § 1501(a)(1)], it is not hyperbolizing to suggest that Congress could do almost anything it wanted. It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place. If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain for it would be “difficult to perceive any limitation on federal power” [Lopez, supra, 514 U.S. at 564], and we would have a Constitution in name only.
In point of fact, the Boston Tea Party was implement to oppose a Tea Tax which happened to exclude a corporate interest (the East India Company) and hence function as a uncompetitive corporate tax break against local small businesses in the colonies.
So this would seem to argue, in contrast to Judge Hudson, that the mandate IS A TAX.
Nobody was being Forced to Buy Tea, it was just the opposite of a import tax being imposed to make the corporately supplied tea more competitive than the locally produced tea.
Ridiculous.
And on top of all this Reagan's Solicitor General also argued today, under oath, that the mandate is Constitutional.
I am quite sure that the health care mandate is constitutional. … My authorities are not recent. They go back to John Marshall, who sat in the Virginia legislature at the time they ratified the Constitution, and who, in 1824, in Gibbons v. Ogden, said, regarding Congress’ Commerce power, “what is this power? It is the power to regulate. That is—to proscribe the rule by which commerce is governed.” To my mind, that is the end of the story of the constitutional basis for the mandate.
The mandate is a rule—more accurately, “part of a system of rules by which commerce is to be governed,” to quote Chief Justice Marshall. And if that weren’t enough for you—though it is enough for me—you go back to Marshall in 1819, in McCulloch v. Maryland, where he said “the powers given to the government imply the ordinary means of execution. The government which has the right to do an act”—surely, to regulate health insurance—“and has imposed on it the duty of performing that act, must, according to the dictates of reason, be allowed to select the means.” And that is the Necessary and Proper Clause. [...]
I think that one thing about Judge Vinson’s opinion, where he said that if we strike down the mandate everything else goes, shows as well as anything could that the mandate is necessary to the accomplishment of the regulation of health insurance.
Like apples? How you like Dem Apples.
Also the vote to Repeal Healthcare in the Senate - Just Failed without a single Dem Defection.
Vyan