Working the Refs
Most of those responding to Williams point out that his is a weird argument — arguing that overturning a generally unpopular government mandate would damage the Supreme Court doesn’t really make sense. But my take is that Williams and others who share his opinion have a weird double standard: 5-4 decisions like Lawrence v. Texas that promote progressive policy preferences are not a problem, but 5-4 decisions that defy those preferences like Citizens United and, potentially, the forthcoming ACA decision are.
What really seems to be going on here is that fans of the ACA have given up on the substantive argument. Their attempts to convince Americans that the individual mandate lies within the near-infinite power of Congress under the Commerce Clause are both legally and politically unsustainable. So they have reverted to a more primitive technique of trying to say that disagreeing with them is simply disallowed, no debate needed.
They would be better off looking to the future — if the ACA is struck down, conservatives will have won a victory, yes, but we will still be left with a dysfunctional health care system desperately in need of reform. And it would be easily possible to resurrect many of the policy options in the ACA without tripping over the Constitution again. For example, the problem with the individual mandate largely arose because of Congress’ contortions to avoid the accusation that they were raising taxes. Simply being honest about what their preferred policies were and what they would cost would clean up the debate and avoid the constitutional conundrum.
Then again, maybe that’s the problem. Single-payer health care has many virtues, but also many flaws. And as many critics noted two years ago, progressive advocates of health care reform tended to avoid persuading anyone in favor of simply bullying everyone.
Perhaps if the ACA goes down, it will be a good thing in that it forces a reconsideration of both the substantive policies for health care and the rhetoric means for promoting them.
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It is time SCOTUS put some controls on congress and the president and bring back the consitution as the governing document of this country.
McKinley was the first President to bypass congress to send troops into combat in the late 1890′s and ever since then, any president who wanted to send troops to combat has used the same plan to bypass congress and the constitutional power granted.
If this stands, all future administrations and congress will use the same plan to fund different needs, bypassing the taxing authority and using the commerce clause to skirt the powers to tax.
Wow. What a joke. First, Republicans won’t care that we have a dysfunctional health care non-system until millions more Americans are seriously hurt by it and they therefore quit buying into the free market myths about health care. Only when enough people consider it enough of a crisis to start basing their vote on the issue will we see change. I think it will probably take another 20 years or more.
BTW, consider this. http://goo.gl/fdDKy
I don’t think there is any chance of a single payer system. It is just too unpopular and, if anything, the tide will be against it after the all this.
Sadly, since Logan is right about the dysfunctional current system, I think little will be done. The current system was passed because on party had the votes to push something through without compromise (and even then, they had trouble with their own moderates). The current parties are to set in their partisanship to compromise on a new one and I don’t think either party will be in a position to act unilaterally. And even if they did, a partisan bill only survives until the pendulum swings again.
In the end partisanship will prevent any chance at a consensus on the problem and we will either go back to the old way (if the entire bill is struck down) or we will just keep the popular bits of the ACA (which means those that spend more money and don’t fix the problems).
Oh, please. The entire ACA was crafted in a futile attempt to draw some Republican support. The mandate was originally a Republican idea. It’s hilarious that you can make that claim and then complain about partisanship.
It didn’t seem very bipartisan to me. Truly bipartisan attempts (like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Americans_Act) were allowed to die. Bacus managed to get Snowe to sign on, and then the leadership threw that away pushing “public option”, but then they lost that to their own moderates. And, in the end, they were barely able compromise enough to get enough of their own moderates on board to pass the thing.
I’m not saying the Republicans are any better, but it was a partisan process all around. Things won’t be different in the future until we break up the two party system.
Dude, the “legitimacy” of the supreme court was undermined the day they came out with the citizens united decision. No intelligent, reasonable person would see this court as credible.
That’s not true, their legitimacy went out the window when they got involved in Bush v Gore…
That ruling proved that they were nothing more than partisan politicians with lifetime appointments…
I stand corrected QF. And lest we forget amid all our genteel opining, the ugly legacy this court is racking up IS the product of republicans and their votes.