– Powerline has a great grab of Mitt Romney being grilledon “is it a mandate or a tax” for CBS.
“Actually the chief justice in his opinion made it very clear that at the state level, states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional. And as a result, Massachusetts’ mandate was a mandate, was a penalty, was described that way by the legislature and by me, and so it stays as it was.”
It’s great debating, but like Paul Mirengoff, I too am unconvinced by the argument here. There are mandates and then there are abuses of power and compelling commerce at any level simply for existing amounts to bad law.
… will most voters understand the difference between the states and the federal government with respect to their power to impose mandates, including a requirement to buy insurance? Probably not. They should, since their state government has long required them to buy automobile insurance, but they probably don’t.
With all due respect, I don’t necessarily agree with this argument for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that you can choose to not own or operate a vehicle. You can take public transportation. You can’t choose to not exist, or select an alternative under Obamacare.
– 70 of US military fatalities in Afghan war occurred on Obama’s watch. – 13,000 pages of new regulations set to debut under Obamacare—and they’re not even done writing them.
– I can’t wait for Democrats to tell us what laws Romney has broken by being wealthy and having a foreign bank account. – The Declaration of Independence Annotated. – Heavily Democrat Hamptons: Too many immigrants here!
– Someone remind Chris Rock that it’s still the party-father of the KKK, the Democrats, exploiting American Indians. See: Fauxcahontas.
