If all post-cloture time on the tax bill is used, a vote on the motion to concur would occur at 12:30 AM tonight. It’s possible an agreement could be reached to hold the vote earlier today. If the motion to concur is agreed to, the bill would be sent to the House for approval.
Later this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may file cloture on an omnibus appropriations bill to fund the government or a more basic continuing resolution (CR). The current CR expires on December 18. Americans for Limited Government warns that "The current continuing resolution is a transparent ploy by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to negate the impact of the November elections. The current continuing resolution under consideration in the Senate will lock in the $3.5 trillion budget at current levels for a whole year without any spending cuts. Congressional Democrats should have no power to set in the nation's budget priorities right now, having been so soundly rejected by the American people in November." Maybe a CR should only be at most for 6 months, so the new Congress can take action to remove wasteful spending sooner rather than later in the next Congress.Other items Reid has signaled he may consider are the House version of the DREAM Act (H.R. 5281), a standalone bill to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” (S. 4023), the new START treaty, and various nominations.
The Wall Street Journal editorializes today, “Only a few months ago, the White House and its allies on the legal left dismissed the constitutional challenges to ObamaCare as frivolous, futile and politically motivated. So much for that. Yesterday, a federal district court judge in Virginia ruled that the health law breaches the Constitution's limits on government power. In a careful 42-page ruling, Judge Henry Hudson declared that ObamaCare's core enforcement mechanism known as the individual mandate—the regulation that requires everyone to purchase health insurance or else pay a penalty—exceeds Congress's authority to regulate the lives of Americans.”
The WSJ points out, “Judge Hudson's opinion is particularly valuable because it dispatches the White House's carousel of rationalizations for its unprecedented intrusions. . . . [A]s Judge Hudson argues, the nut of the case is the Commerce Clause. . . . Judge Hudson says that no court has ever ‘extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.’”
Judge Hudson’s ruling in Virginia is yet another instance of Republican arguments against Democrats’ massive, unpopular health care bill being vindicated. Last month, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of himself and 31 other Republican senators with the court in Florida hearing the case 20 states have brought against the health care law, focusing on the individual mandate. The brief offered by McConnell argued that the individual mandate “compels otherwise passive individuals to engage in economic activity against their will, by requiring them to obtain health insurance regardless of whether or not they wish to purchase a policy. As such, the Mandate dramatically oversteps the bounds of the Commerce Power which has always been understood as a power to regulate, and not to compel, economic activity.”The bill’s clearly questionable constitutionality aside, Republicans repeatedly warned of the negative economic consequences of passing the bill. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported, “Big employers faced with incorporating the first round of health-care changes next month are grappling with how to comply with the long list of new rules. Many companies are hiring consultants to help sort though the mountain of new mandates, which include extending dependent coverage to children up to age 26, and may eventually result in covering more employees. Some are also considering changes to their plans—including pushing costs to workers.” The WSJ notes that in order to comply with new rules, some companies are eliminating plans, once again proving showing that President Obama was wrong when he pledged that “If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it.”
Americans, who were skeptical of this bill to begin with, and all along opposed Democrats jamming it through Congress, have seen all this unfold and still do not like the law. ABC News’ Gary Langer reported yesterday that the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a new low in support for the Democrat’s health bill. Langer wrote, “The law’s never been popular, with support peaking at just 48% in November 2009. Today it’s slipped to 43%, numerically its lowest in ABC/Post polling. (It was about the same, 44%, a year ago.) Fifty-two percent are opposed, and that 9-point gap in favor of opposition is its largest on record since the latest debate over health care reform began in earnest in summer 2009. More also continue to ‘strongly’ oppose the law than to strongly support it, 37% to 22%.”
Robert Romano has an excellent article addressing the Unconstitutionality of Obamacare. As time goes on, Americans’ deep reservations about Democrats’ massive health care bill have shown to be justified by the negative consequences of the bill, just as Republicans’ arguments against it have been repeatedly vindicated through news reports and now Judge Hudson’s ruling in Virginia. The law needs to be repealed and replaced with real solutions to lower costs, without the massive government expansion and explosion in spending that Democrats legislated.
Tags: US Senate, Washington, D.C., tax reductions, federal judge, obamacare, unconstitutional, The Constitution, health car law, Continuing resolution, government spending, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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