DownWithTyranny!: Makes Sense That Steve King Is Leading The Charge To Repeal Health Care Reform

Today the House is debating the repeal of what Republicans call the "unconstitutional" and "job-killing" healthcare bill-- two terms they have long applied to virtually all government programs that have helped ordinary working families, programs like Social Security and Medicare. That's because Republicans and other right-wing political parties don't believe in the legitimacy of democratically elected governments acting as a force for positive social good in terms of fixing the balance between ordinary citizens and wealthy, powerful private interests (elites, corporations, etc). First off, the law isn't unconstitutional at all and the GOP arguments are merely spurious propaganda.

Congress’s power to regulate the national healthcare market is unambiguous. Article I of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The national market in healthcare insurance and services, which Congress found amounts to over $2 trillion annually and consumes more than 17% of the annual gross domestic product, is unquestionably an important component of interstate commerce. One of the Framers’ primary goals was to give Congress the power to regulate matters of national economic significance because states individually could not effectively manage them on their own. The problems facing the modern healthcare system today are precisely the sort of problems beyond the reach of individual states that led the Framers to give Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce.

Opponents of healthcare reform argue that a person who does not buy health insurance is not engaging in any commercial “activity” and thus is beyond Congress’s power to regulate. But this argument misapprehends the unique state of the national healthcare market. Every individual participates in the healthcare market at some point in his or her life, and individuals who self-insure rather than purchase insurance pursue a course of conduct that inevitably imposes significant costs on healthcare providers and taxpayers.

Given that the minimum coverage provision bears a close and substantial relationship to the regulation of the interstate healthcare market, Congress can require minimum coverage pursuant to the Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause. In a landmark decision studied by every law student, the Supreme Court in 1819 explained that the Necessary and Proper clause confirmed Congress’s broad authority to enact laws beyond the strict confines of its other enumerated powers: “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end” are lawful, the Court wrote. Since then, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress, in regulating the national marketplace, can reach matters that when viewed in isolation may not seem to affect interstate commerce.

In 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia explained that the necessary and proper clause gives Congress broad authority to ensure that its economic regulations work. In Justice Scalia’s words, “where Congress has authority to enact a regulation of interstate commerce, it possesses every power needed to make that regulation effective.” Just last term, a majority of the Supreme Court, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, wrote that in “determining whether the Necessary and Proper Clause grants Congress the legislative authority to enact a particular federal statute, we look to see whether the statute constitutes a means that is rationally related to the implementation of a constitutionally enumerated power.”

As for job-killing, more baseless lies to persuade voters to oppose their own interests.

Republicans have titled their effort to overturn the law the "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act," and that's their favorite talking point against it. The House of Representatives will start debate on repeal Tuesday and probably vote Wednesday.

Saying that the law is a job killer doesn't necessarily make it one, however, and independent experts say that such a conclusion is at least premature, if not unfounded.

"The claim has no justification," said Micah Weinberg, a senior research fellow at the centrist New America Foundation's Health Policy Program.

Since the law contains dual mandates that most individuals must obtain health insurance coverage and most employers must offer it by 2014, "the effect on employment is probably zero or close to it," said Amitabh Chandra, a professor of public policy at Harvard University.

House Republicans defend their job-killer claim in a 19-page Jan. 6 report, "ObamaCare: A Budget-Busting, Job-Killing Health Care Law." But some of its points are out of date or omit offsetting information that would weaken the argument.

For instance:

-- The report says that a study by the National Federation of Independent Business, "the nation's largest small business association, found that an employer mandate alone could lead to the elimination of 1.6 million jobs between 2009 and 2014, with 66 percent of those coming from small businesses."

But that study was released on Jan. 28, 2009, well before the law was written. It studied a model, not the law that was enacted eventually, and it was based on a different set of assumptions.

"It's old. We don't use it anymore because it was based on a hypothetical mandate," NFIB spokeswoman Stephanie Cathcart said. While her group still thinks that the law will hurt business job growth, it cites no firm number.

Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said: "The (NFIB) report analyzes the effect of an individual mandate. Obama care includes an individual mandate. We make that clear in the report."

-- The GOP report says: "Economic theory suggests the penalty should ultimately be passed through (as) lower wages (to an employee)," quoting a Congressional Research Service report.

But Republicans chop that sentence short; the CRS version goes on to say that the penalty for not offering coverage "would not be a burden on small business owners."

-- The GOP report says: " 'If firms cannot pass on the cost in lower wages, the higher cost of workers may lead firms to reduce output and the number of workers.' CRS estimates that about one in five employees work for a business that could be negatively impacted by the new employer penalty."

The CRS report does say that, but it also says this, which the GOP report omits:

"(Individuals with lower incomes, however, should be able to receive subsidies in the community-rated pools, which will increase their welfare). For the firm, paying a penalty may be more feasible than providing insurance, especially if their employees are lower income and the wage cannot be lowered below the minimum wage or the burden is too great."

That mitigates the point the GOP quoted, by suggesting that the law has provisions that offset some of its negative impact.

A central problem with concluding flatly that the measure will kill jobs, experts say, is that the law's impact on the economy depends on a host of unpredictable variables.

"There are so many cross-currents it's hard to know what will happen," said Chris Varvares, the president of Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based economic research firm.

To analyze the GOP claims, experts advise considering these questions:

-- Will the law help or hurt economic growth?

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the measure will reduce federal budget deficits by about $230 billion over 10 years. Boehner has disputed the estimate, saying "CBO is entitled to their opinion."

The Republicans are also insisting that Americans hate the health care bill and are demanding it be repealed. That's another lie. Even former GOP Senate Majority Leader (and healthcare expert) Bill Frist says repeal is a mistake. Frist says the bill "has many strong elements. And those elements, whatever happens, need to be preserved, need to be cuddled, need to be snuggled, need to be promoted and need to be implemented." Most Americans, in fact, do not want to see Republicans just turn healthcare back to avaricious and even criminal-minded Big Insurance companies. In fact, almost half of us under 65 have pre-existing conditions that Big Insurance and their Republican allies want targeted. That's around 129 million Americans who are getting nervous about the GOP's barrage of anti-healthcare propaganda. And even a conservative zealot like Ron Paul (R-TX) admits Republicans are hypocrites for keeping taxpayer-subsidized congressional healthcare for their own families while undermining it for the taxpayers themselves!

We'll be taking a closer look in the next few days at a new district by district analysis of the impact of repealing the healthcare law, something, apparently, the Republicans haven't given much thought to-- other than to salivate and play politics.

[Lunatic fringe Iowa Republican Steve] King, who introduced the repeal legislation immediately following health care reform's passage last spring, dismisses suggestions that health care repeal will fail in the Senate and says that a vote in the House will put pressure on wavering lawmakers to support repeal.

"The [Congressional GOP] leadership and the Republicans and a significant number of Democrats have come to this point where we understand that we have to pull Obama care out by the roots, that we can't get this country back on track, nor can we fix our health care problems in America with the obstruction of this bad bill that was ideologically unsound," King said.

"We will pass it and send it to the Senate. We'll work to try to get that up for a vote in the Senate where I predict that it'll pass if we can force a vote, then I expected the president to veto the repeal bill."

King, a five-term representative, admits that neither chamber of Congress is likely to have the necessary support to override a presidential veto. Therefore, according to King, the last step of implementing repeal is to vote President Obama out of the White House and elect a president who will sign a health care repeal in two years.