President Obama’s preemptive criticism last week of the Supreme Court as it considers the constitutionality of his health care continues to face scrutiny.
Speaking in Lexington, Kentucky, on Thursday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell took a dim view of the president’s complaints about the Court. “[A]pparently,” he said, “President Obama didn’t like the tenor of some of the questions the justices asked about the health care law during last week’s hearings, questions that highlighted the unprecedented power that the administration now has over your and everybody else’s health care as a result of its passage . . . The truth is, if this law’s in trouble, it’s because giving the government this much power is hard to defend, not because a few justices had the temerity to suggest as much. But the President seems to be saying that you’re an activist if you’re not stretching the limits of the limited powers the Constitution gives to the federal government.”
In a post on its fact-checking blog today, The Washington Post examines the arguments Obama made and finds them particularly misleading. The piece points out, “It’s clear that Obama’s ‘unprecedented’ comment was dead wrong, because the Supreme Court’s very purpose is to review laws that are passed by the nation’s democratically elected Congress — regardless of how popular or well-intentioned those laws may be.” Further, “Congress didn’t pass the Affordable Care Act with a strong majority. The vote in the House of Representatives, for instance, was 219 to 212, with no Republicans supporting and 34 Democrats opposing the measure.” Also, The Post adds, “It’s worth noting that the White House keeps changing its tune on how the public should interpret Obama’s comments. On Friday, a spokesman told us the president was referring to ‘major economic legislation.’ So now we’ve gone from altogether ‘unprecedented,’ to ‘economic issues’ to just ‘major economic legislation.’”
After discussing some of the Supreme Court precedent and legal history, the fact-checking article concludes, “First of all, the president has a rather distorted view of what constitutes a ‘strong majority’ if he thinks the Affordable Care Act vote makes the cut. Not only was the victory achieved by a margin of just a few votes in the House, but the supporters were from only one political party—his own. Second, Obama’s remarks implied that the Supreme Court would be acting in extreme fashion by overturning the health-care law. That isn’t necessarily true. Some would say that invalidating an economic regulation isn’t extraordinary at all. . . . On balance, the president earns two Pinocchios—which means creating ‘a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people’—for his comments about the pending Supreme Court decision.”
Article written by: Tom White
About Tom White
Tom is a US Navy Veteran, owns an Insurance Agency and is currently an IT Manager for a Virginia Distributor. He has been published in American Thinker, currently writes for the Richmond Examiner as well as Virginia Right! Blog. Tom lives in Hanover County, Va and is involved in politics at every level and is a Recovering Republican who has finally had enough of the War on Conservatives in progress with the Leadership of the GOP on a National Level.
- Web |
- More Posts (4001)
