What's Happening with Seniors Benefits

Issue #91

by Art Kelly

1. The New York Times’ Kevin Sack reports that the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare could actually invalidate the new law.

“Some legal scholars, including some who normally lean to the left, believe states have identified the law’s weak spot and devised a credible theory for eviscerating it,” Sack wrote.

Since the Obamacare Bill was signed into law, 20 states have joined the lawsuit filed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, which may put an end to Obamacare. Virginia has filed its own separate suit.

McCollum, 65, a former congressman, understands the tremendous magnitude of the case.

“I think the constitutional precedents here will have a greater impact on more people than maybe anything else the court has decided,” he said.

Jonathan Turley of the George Washington University Law School, agreed that the arguments against Obamacare are compelling.

“There are few cases in the history of the court system that have a more significant assertion by the government,” Turley said.

The Obama Administration’s Justice Department will defend the health care law, citing the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in two cases 63 years apart that the regulatory of Congress was extremely broad. The Times said the Court ruled that the federal government could even “prevent growers from cultivating crops for personal use because of the cumulative impact on the market.”

One of the outside attorneys who will be handling the case for states, David B. Rivkin, Jr., countered, “Every decision you can make as a human being has an economic footprint…To say that is enough for your behavior to be regulated transforms the Commerce Clause into an infinitely capacious font of power…”

The case will be heard on September 14 before U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson in Pensacola. Vinson, 70, was appointed to the bench in 1983 by President Reagan and is now on senior status, a form of semi-retirement for federal judges.

It is expected that it will take at least two years for the case to reach the Supreme Court.

2. The latest Rasmussen Poll finds that 56% of the American people want to repeal Obamacare, while 37% want to keep it and 7% are undecided.

46% strongly want the new law repealed, but 28% strongly want to retain it.

63% of voters now believe Obamacare will increase the federal deficit. “That’s up four points from last week and three points from when the law was passed in March. Only 12% expect the law to reduce the deficit, the lowest level measured to date,” Rasmussen Reports noted.

By more than a 2 to 1 margin, 50% to 24%, people believe Obamacare will make the quality of health care worse, rather than better. 21% think it will stay the same. Rasmussen states that these numbers have “remained virtually unchanged” since the bill was passed.