Repealing a law by defunding it is surely unconstitutional, but does it matter to these loons?

UPDATE: For a contrary argument on the constitutionality of repealing a law by defunding it, see the comment by esteemed legal commentator Michael Froomkin in the comments section.


[You should be able to click on this News Alert to enlarge it.]


"The constitutional process for repealing a law -- such as Congress and President Clinton did with the old Glass-Steagall Act -- is for both houses to enact a new bill that repeals the old, which must then be signed by the President. If the President vetoes it, then the repeal can only go into effect if the veto is overridden by two-thirds of the House and the Senate."

-- Robert Reich, in a blogpost yesterday

by Ken

It would be easy to make cruel jokes about Senator Ted's vow-slash-threat to yammer his guts out endlessly about Obamacare until he drops. But you can make them as easily as I can, so I'll take the high road here and merely speculate that in all that mindless yammering, the odds are overwhelming that not a single word uttered will be factually accurate. The fact is that all those people shown by polls to be opposed to the Affordable Care Act do not know a single factually correct thing about it -- except of course that President Obama favors it. Because they have gotten all their information about it from people who:

(a) are habitually ignorant, and consequently have no accurate information about it, or about much of anything else;

(b) lack the mental capacity to take in, process, or pass on actual information;

and/or (c) are either pathological or merely strategic liars.

There is, as we've reported abundantly, much to be wary of in the ACA, but hardly any of the legitimate apprehensions figure in the utterly wacko misapprehensions of all those people screaming their opposition to it, or merely me-too-ing it to pollsters. Essentially nothing that they've been deluded into thinking is in the law is there, and they have no clue what actually is. Nor do they have any clue that the demagogues who are whipping up their agitation want nothing more keenly for them than that they shrivel and die.

But then, this is a key feature of the ascendancy of the New Far, Far Right. Truth not only isn't a consideration, it's a red flag. A lump of human filth like Ted Cruz has made it his reason for living to fight truth to the death.

Of course for those Americans recruited into hating ACA it's actually quite sufficient to know that President Obama is for it. What else do they need to know? But hey, if you're stupid enough to allow yourself to be manipulated by a network of crackpots, liars, and con men, well, you've made your choice. You have adopted the far-right philosophy that reality is whatever makes you feel best, even if "feeling best" means experiencing the adrenalin rush of blind rage. Ever since Ronald Reagan promised Americans disposed to shun reality that they would never be forced to acknowledge it, a segment of the country has confidently regarded reality as a left-wing plot.

And there's no more adept practitioner of this sort of mind manipulation than former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who figures in the other story I want to make sure you've seen. It concerns a joint appearance TV appearance Sunday with Robert Reich, who recounted it yesterday in a blogpost that raised an issue I'm surprised not to have heard discussed more.

The House Republicans' Dangerous New Constitutional Doctrine: Repealing Laws by De-Funding Them

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

Yesterday morning on ABC's "This Week," Newt Gingrich and I debated whether House Republicans in should be able to repeal a law -- in this case, the Affordable Care Act -- by de-funding it. Here's the essence:


GINGRICH: Under our constitutional system, going all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215, the people's house is allowed to say to the king we ain't giving you money.



REICH: Sorry, under our constitutional system you're not allowed to risk the entire system of government to get your way.

Had we had more time I would have explained to the former Speaker something he surely already knows: The Affordable Care Act was duly enacted by a majority of both houses of Congress, signed into law by the President, and even upheld by the Supreme Court.

The Constitution of the United States does not allow a majority of the House of Representatives to repeal the law of the land by de-funding it (and threatening to close the entire government, or default on the nation's full faith and credit, if the Senate and the President don't come around).

If that were permissible, no law on the books would be safe. A majority of the House could get rid of unemployment insurance, federal aid to education, Social Security, Medicare, or any other law they didn't like merely by deciding not to fund them. 



I believe the Affordable Care Act will prove to be enormously popular with the American public once it's fully implemented -- which is exactly why the Republicans are so intent on bulldozing it before then. If they were sincere about their objections, they'd let Americans try it out -- and then, if it didn't work, decide to repeal it. 



The constitutional process for repealing a law -- such as Congress and President Clinton did with the old Glass-Steagall Act -- is for both houses to enact a new bill that repeals the old, which must then be signed by the President. If the President vetoes it, then the repeal can only go into effect if the veto is overridden by two-thirds of the House and the Senate.

The Republicans who are now running the House of Representatives are pushing a dangerous new constitutional doctrine. They must be stopped. There should be no compromising with fanatics.

This question of the legality or appropriateness of "defunding" a law has been gnawing at me since the l ying doodyheads of the Far Right announced it as their new strategy, but I sort of went along with it on the Newt-ish ground that, well, Congress has the power of the purse, doesn't it? Well, no, as Secretary Reich argues, it doesn't have the power to make or unmake laws through its control of the purse strings.

Then again, does it really matter? Part of the Far, Far Right's rewrite of reality is the catch-all provision that nobody can make them do anything they don't want to do or stop them from doing anything they do want to do unless they have the ability to literally make them. And let's say the issue was forced to a constitutional test. Of course it would be ages before it could make its way to the Supreme Court in the normal course of things, but the Court's present thug-majority might goose the process if it feels -- as I have a deep dread it might -- that the question deserves a thug-ruling.

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