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Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who has served in the Senate for 33 years and is a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, told CNSNews.com that he does not believe the Democrats’ health-care reform plan is constitutionally justifiable, noting that if the federal government can force Americans to buy health insurance “then there is literally nothing the federal government can’t force us to do.”
Both the House and Senate versions of the health-care reform plan would force all individuals who are citizens or legal residents of the United States to buy health insurance. President Obama has endorsed this provision.
Hatch said if the federal government starts ordering Americans to purchase specific products without being able to plausibly justify that mandate through the Commerce Clause of the Constitution which empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce, it will mean “we’ve lost our freedoms, and that means the federal government can do anything it wants to do to us.”
Hatch said this constitutional language authorizes Congress to regulate some types of commercial “activity,” which is different from authorizing Congress to force an individual American to engage in a commercial activity he or she is not presently engaged in and–as a free person–does not want to engage in. He said that “not one” of his Democratic colleagues has given a coherent constitutional argument to explain where Congress would derive the authority to do the latter.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government has never before mandated that Americans buy any good or service.
The United States Federal Government SHOULD NOT be allowed to force any of us to purchase health care. If you want to read more about this and understand it a bit more, CNS News does a very good job of laying out what was said by Senator Hatch. You can continue reading more about the Health Care Reform Bill and Senator Hatch’s statements at CNSNews.
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