‘General Welfare’ Clause Empowers Congress to Order Americans to Buy Health Insurance

[VB]

(CNSNews.com) – House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that the individual health insurance mandates included in every health reform bill, which require Americans to have insurance, were “like paying taxes.” He added that Congress has “broad authority” to force Americans to purchase other things as well, so long as it was trying to promote “the general welfare.”

The Congressional Budget Office, however, has stated in the past that a mandate forcing Americans to buy health insurance would be an “unprecedented form of federal action,” and that the “government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”

Hoyer, speaking to reporters at his weekly press briefing on Tuesday, was asked by CNSNews.com where in the Constitution was Congress granted the power to mandate that a person must by a health insurance policy. Hoyer said that, in providing for the general welfare, Congress had “broad authority.”

“Well, in promoting the general welfare the Constitution obviously gives broad authority to Congress to effect that end,” Hoyer said. “The end that we’re trying to effect is to make health care affordable, so I think clearly this is within our constitutional responsibility.”

Hoyer compared a health insurance mandate to the government’s power to levy taxes, saying “we mandate other things as well, like paying taxes.”

The section of the Constitution Hoyer was referring to, Article I, Section 8, outlines the powers of Congress, including raising taxes, but not the purchasing any type of product or service. The opening paragraph of Section 8 grants Congress the power to raise taxes to, among other things, “provide for the … general welfare of the United States.”

Section 8 partly reads: “The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”

The Constitution then details the specific powers of Congress, including raising an Army and Navy, regulating commerce between states, and to “make all laws necessary and proper” for the carrying out of these enumerated powers.

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof,” concludes Section 8.

CNSNews.com also asked Hoyer if there is a limit to what Congress can mandate that Americans purchase and whether there is anything that specifically could not be mandated to purchase. Hoyer said that eventually the Supreme Court would find a limit to Congress’ power, adding that mandates that unfairly favored one person or company over another would obviously be unconstitutional.

“I’m sure the [Supreme] Court will find a limit,” Hoyer said. “For instance, if we mandated that you buy General Motors’ automobiles, I believe that would be far beyond our constitutional responsibility and indeed would violate the Due Process Clause as well – in terms of equal treatment to automobile manufacturers.”



U.S. Constitution
Hoyer said that the insurance mandate was constitutional because Congress is not forcing Americans to buy one particular policy, just any health insurance policy.

“We don’t mandate that they buy a particular insurance [policy] but what we do mandate is that like driving a car -- if you’re going to drive a car, to protect people on the roadway, and yourself, and the public for having to pay your expenses if you get hurt badly – that you need to have insurance,” said Hoyer.

In 1994, the Congressional Budget Office reported the following about health insurance mandates: “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.”

Under all five of the health care bills currently being considered in Congress, every American adult would have to have a policy that conformed to government standards for coverage and premiums. Each bill creates Bronze, Silver, and Gold health insurance plans and mandates that Americans buy one of them, either through their employer or through government-run exchanges.

David B. Rivkin, a constitutional lawyer with Baker & Hostetler, told CNSNews.com that Hoyer’s argument was “silly,” adding that if the general welfare clause was that elastic, then nothing would be outside of Congress’ powers.

“Congressman Hoyer is wrong,” Rivkin said. “The notion that the general welfare language is a basis for a specific legislative exercise is all silly because if that’s true, because general welfare language is inherently limitless, then the federal government can do anything.

“The arguments are, I believe, feeble,” he said.

Link

[AK Airborne]

Anyone know if VA is considered acceptable to da gubmint ?

[Falschirmjaeger]

2+2=5
War is peace
Fox News= Emmanuel Goldstein






Need to add the terms:

Democratthink
Acornspeak

Not let's make sure that we fan the fires of class hatred and start limiting wall street salaries, taking property from the rich, and redistributing it "more equitably"

[RedFalcon]

2+2=5
War is peace

What?!? Three Orwell references this month? we'd better slow down...

[Falschirmjaeger]

What?!? Three Orwell references this month? we'd better slow down...

If the prole fits...

[Jeff82]

Immense and horrid misuse of the "general welfare" clause.

The Liberty Tree is parched.

[old grunt]

This administration is practicing what I call "incremental tyranny"....small "cuts" to our Freedom that will eventually cause the patient to bleed to death. WAKE UP AMERICA and GET INVOLVED. Our Freedoms are being challenged more at home,in my opinion,by this administration than by any foreign threat. This is scary and we will have no one to blame but ourselves!!!

[yrualeg]

Talk about stepping out of your lane....Congress has moved into left field, they are facing the stands and they have their gloves on their heads screaming "Kick me the Ball"

[Falschirmjaeger]

Talk about stepping out of your lane....Congress has moved into left field, they are facing the stands and they have their gloves on their heads screaming "Kick me the Ball"

...while hoping the field will freeze so their hockey skates become useful.

[Doc Hollywood]

Actually there is no "general welfare" clause. Its a misuse of the term.

Congress may take no action unless the Constitution specifically grants it the authority to do so - we all know this.

Most commonly Congres relies on the Commerce Power to enact universal legislation because it allows them the greatest encroachment on 10th Amendment State Rights.

The spending power requires that spending must be made in some way for the general welfare of the USA. It does not mean they can force a citizen to spend money.

One way this could work would be government provided health care - where a tax is levied to pay for the universally available health care (not unlike SSA). We all know this wont happen.

The Necessary and Proper clause MUST be attached to a Constitutionally permissible act authorized by a Constitutional power source. It is not itself a power source.

Silly is right.

[david1833]

The man talks about auto insurance like it is a Fed mandated law. It's not true States mandate auto, life insurance through there own states because they are contracts. If he was right then why do they have a bill in Congress to create a National Insurance policy. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-40

[Falschirmjaeger]

• SEPTEMBER 15, 2009, 8:57 A.M. ET

Health-Care Reform and the Constitution

Why hasn't the Commerce Clause been read to allow interstate insurance sales?




By ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO

Last week, I asked South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, where in the Constitution it authorizes the federal government to regulate the delivery of health care. He replied: "There's nothing in the Constitution that says that the federal government has anything to do with most of the stuff we do." Then he shot back: "How about [you] show me where in the Constitution it prohibits the federal government from doing this?"
Rep. Clyburn, like many of his colleagues, seems to have conveniently forgotten that the federal government has only specific enumerated powers. He also seems to have overlooked the Ninth and 10th Amendments, which limit Congress's powers only to those granted in the Constitution.
One of those powers—the power "to regulate" interstate commerce—is the favorite hook on which Congress hangs its hat in order to justify the regulation of anything it wants to control.
Unfortunately, a notoriously tendentious New Deal-era Supreme Court decision has given Congress a green light to use the Commerce Clause to regulate noncommercial, and even purely local, private behavior. In Wickard v. Filburn (1942), the Supreme Court held that a farmer who grew wheat just for the consumption of his own family violated federal agricultural guidelines enacted pursuant to the Commerce Clause. Though the wheat did not move across state lines—indeed, it never left his farm—the Court held that if other similarly situated farmers were permitted to do the same it, might have an aggregate effect on interstate commerce.
James Madison, who argued that to regulate meant to keep regular, would have shuddered at such circular reasoning. Madison's understanding was the commonly held one in 1789, since the principle reason for the Constitutional Convention was to establish a central government that would prevent ruinous state-imposed tariffs that favored in-state businesses. It would do so by assuring that commerce between the states was kept "regular."
The Supreme Court finally came to its senses when it invalidated a congressional ban on illegal guns within 1,000 feet of public schools. In United States v. Lopez (1995), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause may only be used by Congress to regulate human activity that is truly commercial at its core and that has not traditionally been regulated by the states. The movement of illegal guns from one state to another, the Court ruled, was criminal and not commercial at its core, and school safety has historically been a state function.
Applying these principles to President Barack Obama's health-care proposal, it's clear that his plan is unconstitutional at its core. The practice of medicine consists of the delivery of intimate services to the human body. In almost all instances, the delivery of medical services occurs in one place and does not move across interstate lines. One goes to a physician not to engage in commercial activity, as the Framers of the Constitution understood, but to improve one's health. And the practice of medicine, much like public school safety, has been regulated by states for the past century.
The same Congress that wants to tell family farmers what to grow in their backyards has declined "to keep regular" the commercial sale of insurance policies. It has permitted all 50 states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down. Insurers are barred from selling policies to people in another state.
That's right: Congress refuses to keep commerce regular when the commercial activity is the sale of insurance, but claims it can regulate the removal of a person's appendix because that constitutes interstate commerce.
What we have here is raw abuse of power by the federal government for political purposes. The president and his colleagues want to reward their supporters with "free" health care that the rest of us will end up paying for. Their only restraint on their exercise of Commerce Clause power is whatever they can get away with. They aren't upholding the Constitution—they are evading it.
Mr. Napolitano, who served on the bench of the Superior Court of New Jersey between 1987 and 1995, is the senior judicial analyst at the Fox News Channel. His latest book is "Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America" (Nelson, 2009).

[Jeff82]

Right on the money Doc!

[david1833]

Doc's got it right.

They have changed the original definition of welfare, ( prosperity,happiness, and well being ) to the modern definition ( public assistance, those that are poor, and to programs, that create equality.) Also the word Due-process. It is our fault because the buck stops with "We the People".