THE US REPORT

Unique perspectives on U.S. politics, government and culture

Navigation

U.S. News and Commentary

Admin.

Wednesday

Aug042010

As states fight Obamacare, supremacy clause misunderstood

Wednesday, August 4, 2010 at 9:43AM

Missouri voters have shot down the Obamacare mandate for individuals to buy health insurance, and other states have adopted various means of fighting the new law that is a legislative boondoggle. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) demonstrated the lack of logic in the poorly conceived bill most in Congress admitted they did not even read before passing.

Making her pitch to a group of supporters, Pelosi said, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

I get Chris Matthews-type shivers when I read a statement like that from the woman who leads the U.S. House.

At every turn when there is dissatisfaction from states about vague, poorly written federal legislation that can be extremely costly, media and statists cite the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution.

Some congressmen do too—at the moment a video of Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) is circulating because he told constituents at a townhall meeting, “The federal government … can do most anything in this country.” That statement has a nice totalitarian ring, doesn’t it?

But the clause referred to by statists as the ‘supremacy clause’ does not give a blank power check to the federal government. Like a number of other Constitutional points, this clause has been spot-read by statist media ever-eager to help Democrats complete the goal of reshaping the U.S. into a collectivist nation.

Here is the section Democrats are currently using to pass questionable legislation: “[Article 6, Section 2] This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”

And here is the clause those same Democrats and their fellow statists misunderstand: “This constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof…”

The law has to be grounded in the Constitution. Obamacare is not; it is unconstitutional regardless of claims by Ivy Leaguers who want to transform the document into an entity that bears little resemblance to the original.

The Associated Press said, “Legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia have passed similar statutes without referring them to the ballot, and voters in Arizona and Oklahoma will vote on such measures as state constitutional amendments in November. Missouri was the first state to challenge aspects of the federal law in a referendum.”

A candidate for Congress from the state of Tennessee, Republican Van Irion has filed a class action lawsuit challenging Obamacare.

Florida is attempting to place a state constitutional amendment on the November ballot; that effort is headed for the state Supreme Court after Circuit Judge James Shelfer (Leon County) said the language was “misleading.”

I must point out that the complete text of the 2,801 page Obamacare bill is grossly, perhaps intentionally, “misleading.”

The so-called ‘Supremacy Clause’ is at present misunderstood and taken out of context. There is an equally powerful article statists don’t like to talk about—Article X in the Bill of Rights. This article is very clear: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Stark, Pelosi and their colleagues should make special note of that phrase “to the people.” Obviously, they have misunderstood major sections of the document that specifically limits their power.

The Tenth Amendment Center puts the amendment in context: “The issue of power – and especially the great potential for a power struggle between the federal and the state governments – was extremely important to the America’s founders. They deeply distrusted government power, and their goal was to prevent the growth of the type of government that the British [have] exercised over the colonies.”

Some might simply substitute the word ‘federal government’ for ‘British’ in the sentence above.

The U.S. Constitution is the citizens’ contract with liberty. We should fiercely protect it and deny those who misunderstand it the right to govern according to the will of Party ideology rather than the will of the people.

On his US House website, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) posted a flow chart based on Obamacare, a bill written in grossly misleading language.[Commentary by Kay B. Day/Aug. 4, 2010]