As a result, this massive new ‘entitlement’ actually accelerates the speed at which the already-near-crisis programs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid fall into insolvency. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia recently produced a study and video highlighting some of the consequences of this foolishness.

The health care bill of 2010 was said to provide two major benefits. First, the bill promised to find savings in the government’s biggest health insurance program, Medicare, and use those savings to reduce the deficit. Second, the bill promised to expand health care coverage to uninsured Americans. Sounds pretty good, right? But how does the government propose to pay for both?

Here’s where the math becomes fuzzy. Research from “The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act” shows how this just doesn’t add up. Find out more here.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-1)

The federal government has instituted many laws and regulations that are not only unconstitutional, but harmful. Crimes that should be handled locally are made federal, and unelected bureaucrats create regulations that have the force of law. These violate the Constitution’s principles of federalism, limited government, and representative legislative bodies.

The following video gives examples of these violations. This is a clearly bipartisan issue, as the two congressman highlighted in the video are from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Please contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and urge them to support common-sense reigning-in of the federal government’s over-criminalization. More information is available from the Heritage Foundation here.

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

The EPA is not included in this grant of legislative power, thus they have no constitutional authority to make such laws, despite their insistence to the contrary. Please read Bill’s article below for more information:

Last week the Environmental Protection Agency issued new standards for carbon dioxide requiring that fewer than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide be released per megawatt-hour of electricity. Plants running on natural gas already average below 850 pounds. Coal-fired plants, which emit on average 1,768 pounds per megawatt-hour, cannot achieve this without prohibitively expensive carbon capture and storage, or CCS.

The mandate came in response to a 2007 Supreme Court case instructing the EPA to determine whether carbon dioxide threatens public health and thus merits regulation under the Clean Air Act. The agency dutifully did, bowing to environmental zealots in late 2009 with its “endangerment finding.”

Coal presently provides almost half our electricity. Given the enormous advantages of affordable energy, it is odd how adamantly certain parties disparage fossil fuels. Few of modern life’s comforts and conveniences would remain feasible without combustible energy. Cheap energy extends and improves life. Forcing families to purchase not just electricity, but costly CCS contraptions too, propels prices higher.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson trumpets the agency’s efforts assisting working-class Americans, who, she states, are disproportionately imperiled by global warming. Politically correct posturing aside, soaring energy costs also disproportionately harm lower-income families, for whom fuel constitutes a larger share of their budgets.

Amid mounting evidence that man-made global warming is vastly exaggerated, this mandate appears merely a fulfillment of then-candidate Barack Obama’s boast, “So, if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant they can, it’s just that [my policies] will bankrupt them.”

The EPA’s onerous, piecemeal emissions standards are now seeping out in reaction to the stalling of carbon cap and trade in the U.S. Senate. This barrage of bureaucratic diktats — including last year’s cross-state air pollution standards and recent mercury rulings clearly designed to discourage coal — has resulted in numerous power plants already being needlessly shuttered.

EPA bureaucrats are not impartial defenders of public welfare. Particularly now, they are fervent environmentalists pursuing a radical agenda. Many of the same activists who originally sued the EPA in order to force the regulation of carbon later joined the agency, and now they hide behind the same Supreme Court victory they obtained at its expense. This includes Lisa Heinzerling, of whom Jackson gloated, “The lead author of Massachusetts vs. EPA came to work at the agency she once sued — to see through the work she sued to do.”

This latest assault on coal only applies to new plants, and the market’s pendulum has swung temporarily toward natural gas anyway. Still, the Left’s argument that this ruling therefore will not raise energy prices falls flat. If this does nothing, then why bother?

The new limits may not instantly catapult energy costs higher, but the suppression of coal could have long-term consequences. Had past decades’ overbearing restrictions on drilling and oil refineries never occurred, gasoline would cost far less today. The EPA’s fossil fuel vendetta will likely deliver similar costly future blows to working Americans’ budgets.

Sure, there’s “green” energy, but such sideshows will remain perpetually affixed to Washington’s subsidy incubator so long as combustible energy persists. Alternative fuels become viable only when government deliberately makes traditional sources unviable. And such policies doubly whack taxpayers. Their electricity costs more, and their tax dollars are diverted to politically correct absurdities.

It will not suffice for a new administration to install more reasonable leadership next January. The EPA’s corridors are staffed by hordes of fervent environmentalists. A new director may slow the advance of economic mayhem, but the bureaucracy is too entrenched, the zealots too focused.

As this charade revealing the farce of environmentalism highlights, Congress should dismantle the EPA. It no longer seeks America’s best interests and it is redundant anyway, given that all fifty states have similar agencies. Let free markets direct energy policy, for everyone’s benefit.

Bill Flax, a banker living in Cincinnati, is a contributor for Forbes and a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.

Help us restore America to constitutionally-limited government by sharing this with your friends and supporting our work.

The Heritage Foundation’s Todd Gaziano and Hans von Spakovsky attended each day’s hearings and were able to provide immediate reaction to what happened in the court after the conclusion of each session. Watch their reports here:

Supreme Court of the United States

Last week the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) heard oral arguments for and against the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as Obamacare. Liberals have been attacking and blaming Solicitor General Verilli, who argued much of the case on behalf of the Obama administration, for ‘botching’ the defense.

But how was he supposed to defend the indefensible? This wasn’t Obama talking in vague generalities about the law’s benefits; Verilli was supposed to convince five of nine justices of the law’s constitutionality. His audience wasn’t a hand-picked crowd of liberal admirers, but (in theory anyway) the world’s nine most intelligent and learned experts on the U.S. Constitution. His task was further complicated by the fact that, due to the way Obama and the Congress passed and defended the law, he was supposed to argue logically inconsistent positions.

The oral arguments were spread over three days. Monday was ninety minutes on whether the individual mandate’s ‘penalty’ was really a tax; if so, SCOTUS may need to wait until 2015 to rule on the case. Tuesday’s two hours of argument were on whether the ‘individual mandate’ was an unconstitutional stretching of the Constitution’s ‘commerce clause.’ Wednesday the court heard arguments on what should happen to the rest of the law if they decide the individual mandate is unconstitutional, and whether the law’s massive expansion of Medicaid is ‘coercion’ of the states and a violation of federalism.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has said since he filed his lawsuit on the day Obama signed the bill that the case is not really about health care, but about Liberty. He believes that if the court upholds the law, it will be the end of federalism. Last week’s arguments seemed to go well, and we hope federalism and constitutionally-limited government survive. Even if they do, we must be vigilant in defending our Constitution against those, in both parties, who ignore the Constitution when its limits are found to be inconvenient.

Sen. Mike Lee, (R-UT)

Senator Mike Lee of Utah understands our Constitution and is a great defender of it in the U.S. Senate. Last week he wrote an opinion piece in Politico describing the importance of the Constitution.

As a senator, I’ve sworn an oath to the Constitution. Complying is not always  convenient. Sometimes it means voting against legislation that includes policies  I support. Other times, it requires standing up for our nation’s founding  principles — even if it’s unpopular.

The Constitution itself is not a document of convenience. It specifies an  onerous process — bicameralism and presentment — to pass legislation. It imposes  a system of checks and balances among the branches. Perhaps most important, it  limits the types of power the federal government can exercise.

In the words of James Madison, the father of our founding  document: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal  government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state  governments are numerous and indefinite.”

This basic limitation on federal powers is inconvenient for national  politicians, who often seek to advance their agenda by any means. Nowhere is  this more evident than with “Obamacare.”

…By seeking to compel individuals to enter into specific commercial activity in the first place, the president and the Democratic Congress  disregarded any semblance of congressional restraint. They recklessly exceeded  federal constitutional authority and attempted to exercise a power the  Constitution reserves to the states.

As inconvenient as constitutional limits may seem, individual liberty  requires that they be respected. In fact, it is precisely when temptation is greatest to disregard constitutional structures to achieve some national policy  outcome that our Constitution’s limits must be enforced. As the Supreme Court  once explained, though the Constitution’s restrictions may at times appear “formalistic” and may prohibit measures that are “the product of the era’s  perceived necessity,” our founding document wisely “protects us from our own  best intentions … so that we may resist the temptation to concentrate power in  one location as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day.”

I trust that the current justices recognize this truth — and don’t allow the president’s illegitimate exercise of federal power to stand.

Read the rest of Sen. Lee’s article here. Please share this information with others, and help us elect more constitutionally-correct leaders like Sen. Lee.

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli

March 24, 2011

Dear Fellow Virginians,

Today was the first day of the three-day healthcare hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court, and as promised, I wanted to offer you my reflections on today’s hearing.

Today the Court heard 90 minutes of argument on the Anti-Injunction Act (“AIA”).  The AIA was enacted in 1867 to require any lawsuits challenging tax statutes to happen only after the taxes are paid; i.e., pay first, then sue.  The rationale is that it’s important to keep the tax revenues flowing without nuisance lawsuits getting in the way, and the national government can pay back any necessary taxes and interest on those relatively rare occasions when it loses such a suit.

Two years ago, the federal government was arguing that the AIA barred the lawsuits challenging the federal healthcare bill, but they have since changed position to agree with the states that the AIA should not apply to bar this case.

Even if the AIA applied and the case was dismissed, it would not be a judgment on the merits of the lawsuit – i.e., it wouldn’t be a judgment about whether the individual mandate is constitutional or not.  So, we’d all be back in three years after folks refused to pay the penalty.

Can you imagine the destruction that would be caused by three more years of uncertainty about whether or not the federal healthcare law is constitutional?  I’d rather not contemplate it.

It’s always a bit dicey to read too much into oral argument, but the tone and focus of the justices’ questions and comments gave me the strong impression that they will not throw the case out without reaching the merits.

The moment the case began, Justice Kennedy was immediately on the front edge of his seat, but Justice Scalia got the first question in… followed closely by Justice Kennedy.  Pretty soon all of the justices were firing away (except Justice Thomas, as he famously does not ask questions during oral argument).

Some of the most interesting exchanges came from some unexpected directions.  And there was some spill-forward into tomorrow’s hearing regarding the individual mandate as it relates to the feds’ tax argument.

Today also saw a lawyer appointed by the Supreme Court itself arguing that the AIA bars the case from going forward.

It is fairly common for the Court to appoint a lawyer to argue a position that no party in the case is advancing, but I cannot remember a case in which the Court appointed two such lawyers.  The second Supreme Court appointed lawyer will argue on Wednesday regarding the severability of the individual mandate (more on that Wednesday night).

Justice Breyer was the first to ask a tax question that clearly will tie in to tomorrow’s arguments.  Quite simply, as it relates to the penalty you have to pay if you don’t buy the government-mandated health insurance, Justice Breyer asked simply “why is this a tax?”

While addressing the U.S. Solicitor General, Justice Alito noted words to the effect that ‘today you are arguing the penalty is not a tax, so the AIA shouldn’t come into play, but tomorrow you’ll be here arguing that the penalty is a tax.’  He clearly had a problem with that set of arguments, and he wasn’t alone.

Justice Sotomayor noted a series of exceptions or exemptions from the AIA, and wanted to know if there was ever a case where something was found to be a tax for constitutional purposes, but not for purposes of the AIA.  No such case was cited.

This is consistent with the federal government’s inconsistency (did you follow that?).  In this particular case, both the states and the feds agree the AIA should not apply, and today’s discussion seemed to suggest the Court is headed in that direction.  However, the states and the feds come to their conclusions differently, and once again, the feds rely on words meaning one thing here, and another thing there.

Wouldn’t it be nice if words meant the same thing every time?  Words like “tax,” “penalty,” and “economic activity.”  To you and me maybe, but not the federal government.

Regarding the tax question, Justice Ginsberg noted that the penalty was to induce compliance with the mandate, not to raise revenue (generally, to be a tax, an act must be intended to raise revenue generally).  Justice Ginsberg went on to note that because the penalty was to back up the compulsion to buy insurance, it wasn’t a tax.

I’ll finish today’s walk-through with what I thought was the most interesting exchange of the day, and it was between Justice Kagan and the SG.  Justice Kagan posed the following scenario and question: “If someone didn’t buy the mandated insurance, and paid the penalty, then later was answering a question about whether they had ever violated a federal law, what would the answer be?”  The SG, in a decidedly unconfident manner answered “No.”

Think about that.  The feds mandate you have to buy insurance, but if you don’t obey that mandate, you have not broken the law?  Again, this illustrates the incredible inconsistencies undertaken by the feds.

Assuming that the AIA does not bar the case – an outcome I expect – then they will reach the question of the constitutionality of the mandate itself… and that is what will be argued for two hours tomorrow.

This really is the heart of the case, and it goes to the outer limits of already-expansive federal power.

If the federal government can order you to buy health insurance, then there’s nothing to stop them from ordering you to buy a car, asparagus, or a gym membership (the very examples used by the district court judge in Virginia’s case).  That’s why I say this case is not about health care or health insurance, it’s about liberty.

On a separate note, it’s worth recognizing that today’s subject matter – the AIA – is in many ways the most confusing subject in the case.  After you read my analysis of all three days, I think you’ll see what I mean.

If you’d like to hear the audio briefing I gave to Virginia media today, click here.

Tomorrow I will again be in the courtroom taking notes to share with you tomorrow night in The Compass.  And while all three days are important, tomorrow is the biggest of them all, so stay tuned tomorrow night!

Also – please make sure to share this with your friends!  If you can – please forward this on!

Sincerely,

Ken Cuccinelli, II
Attorney General of Virginia

Obamacare is perhaps the biggest, but far from the only, example of Congresses blatant disregard for our Constitution. Help us elect leaders who will restore our nation to Constitutional limits on federal power.

Every election, voters are told that this election is the most important of our lifetimes. In most elections, it’s not really true. In 2012, though, it probably is true, for one reason: Obamacare.

Two years after a Democratic Congress and President Obama foisted onto the American people an unpopular trillion-dollar takeover of American health care, we know that Obamacare is, in fact, even more unpopular than before and that it will cost almost $2 trillion.

The American people were told Obamacare would reduce health care costs, but premiums already are jumping. The American people were told they could keep their own coverage, but a new Congressional Budget Office report says millions will lose their current coverage every year.

Indeed, the final hurdle for Obamacare’s passage was Mr. Obama’s and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s scramble to convince religiously minded Democrats that religious liberty and individual conscience rights would be protected under their new law. The recent abortion-pill mandate shows those 11th-hour promises were false.

So, as should be the case about something as important as a government takeover of one-sixth of the economy, the final decision about Obamacare must be made by the American people at the ballot box. Already, voters voiced their disapproval in the historic 2010 elections, which sent many Obamacare supporters to the unemployment line.

This year, the November elections will either return to Washington a pro-Obamacare president and Congress or a pro-repeal president and Congress. They will have a mandate to enact the public’s will, one way or the other.

Conservatives should affirm these certitudes: First, legislating according to the consent of the governed is what our republic is all about. Second, Obamacare – contrary to Democrats’ expectations – has only grown more unpopular since it was passed, as its ugly details have emerged and offended. Third, Obamacare is not an indirect, gimmicky campaign issue but a direct, concrete, firable offense the president and Democrats in Congress committed against our will and in plain view.

Were the entire 2012 general election debate reduced to “candidates from this party will implement Obamacare and candidates from that party will repeal Obamacare,” that debate would do our nation credit and do great service to the electorate.

Unfortunately, the clarity of that choice may soon be muddied, not by Democrats desperate to hide from their record, but inexplicably, by Republicans pushing a vote on a bill to undo one part of Obamacare: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB).

IPAB is one of the most obnoxious parts of Obamacare: The unelected, unaccountable board of “experts” who effectively will be able to decide which patients can receive which treatments at what costs and from which doctors. The essence of Obamacare is government rationing of people’s access to medicine: IPAB bureaucrats are the rationers.

So we are as adamantly opposed to IPAB as we are to the rest of Obamacare – from the individual mandate to the abortion-pill requirement to the multitrillion-dollar price tag.

But IPAB is not distinct from Obamacare; it’s an inextricable part of the whole. As such, it should be repealed as part of the whole. The same holds true for attempts to surgically extract out the attack on religious freedom, the individual mandate and the financially unsustainable CLASS Act long-term care entitlement. Repealing little pieces of Obamacare here and there to render the cataclysmic merely disastrous undermines not only the essential causes of liberty and repeal, but the clarity of the choice the American people deserve.

The Democratic Party is the party of Obamacare. If Republicans, through their toying with Obamacare, present themselves to voters as the party of some of Obamacare, we will lose. We will deserve to lose. The blame for the coming decades of debt, dependence and decline will fall to us.

A vote to repeal only IPAB sends the message that we believe Obamacare is the patient and IPAB is the cancer that needs to be removed to save Obamacare. Our true patient is health care freedom, and Obamacare – not part of it, but all 2,000 pages – is the malignancy.

Given a choice between Obamacare as it is or full repeal, a majority of Americans and – if not now, very soon – a majority of Congress will choose full repeal. Therefore, that must be the only choice Republicans offer. Until Obamacare is fully repealed, the only health care votes Republicans should cast should be for full repeal of the unconstitutional takeover.

The idea that we can “fix” Obamacare is as fatal as the president’s conceit in contending that Obamacare would “fix” the health care system. We know what real reform looks like – people owning their own health plans; treatment decisions made privately between patients and their doctors; freedom to purchase health plans across state lines; and help for the poor, the elderly and the sick. It looks nothing like the monstrosity the president forced on us, and it looks nothing like the slightly less monstrous version partial repeals would leave us with.

The American people’s message to the Republican Party in 2010 should be the same message we send back to the people in 2012. When it comes to Obamacare, end it, don’t mend it.

The federal government has an agency called the Government Accountability Office, which has identified 1,500 wasteful and duplicative federal programs where taxpayers could potentially save $400 billion every year.

The chart below, compiled by the conservative Republican Study Committee shows just a sample of Washington’s wasteful spending. Notice that none of the programs listed are among the Constitution’s powers granted to the federal government. Contact your U.S. Senators and Representative and tell them to cut the wasteful, unconstitutional spending.

Lower spending, less regulation, increased federalism, better roads built smarter and faster… sounds great! Unfortunately, too many Senators like their re-election transportation slush fund, and the amendment was defeated 67-30.  Watch the video of his speech here: