Newsmax released Judge Andrew P. Napolitano's interview with Ashley Martella
"The Constitution does not authorize the Congress to regulate the state
governments. Nevertheless, in this piece of
legislation, the Congress has told the state governments that they must
modify their regulation of certain areas of healthcare, they must
surrender their regulation of other areas of healthcare, and they must
spend state taxpayer-generated dollars in a way that the Congress wants
it done.
"That's called commandeering the legislature. That's the
Congress taking away the discretion of the legislature with respect to
regulation, and spending taxpayer dollars. That's prohibited in a
couple of Supreme Court cases. So on that argument, the attorneys
general have a pretty strong case and I think they will prevail.”
Napolitano on the longstanding precedent of state
regulation of the healthcare industry makes the new federal regulations
that much more problematic:
"The Supreme Court has ruled that in areas of human behavior that are
not delegated to the Congress in the Constitution, and that have been
traditionally regulated by the states, the Congress can't simply move
in there and the states for 230 years have had near
exclusive regulation over the delivery of healthcare. The states
license hospitals. The states license medications. The states license
healthcare providers whether they're doctors, nurses, or pharmacists.
The feds have had nothing to do with it.
"The Congress can't simply wake up one day and decide that it wants to
regulate this. I predict that the Supreme Court will invalidate major
portions of what the president just signed into law…"
The judge also says he would rate President Obama as one of the worst
presidents in terms of obedience to constitutional limitations.
"I believe we have a one party system in this country, called the
big-government party. There is a Republican branch
that likes war and deficits and assaulting civil liberties. There is a
Democratic branch that likes welfare and taxes and assaulting
commercial liberties.
"President Obama obviously is squarely within the Democratic branch.
The president who had the least fidelity to the Constitution was
Abraham Lincoln, who waged war on half the country, even though there's
obviously no authority for that, a war that killed nearly 700,000
people. President Obama is close to that end of lacking fidelity to the
Constitution. He wants to outdo his hero FDR."
For those who oppose healthcare, the Fox legal expert says, the bad
news is that many of the legal challenges to healthcare reform will
have to wait until 2014, when the changes become fully operational.
Until then, there would be no legal case that individuals had been
actually harmed by the law. Moreover, Napolitano says it takes an
average of four years for a case to work its way through the various
federal courts the final hearing that's expected to come before the
Supreme Court.
"You're talking about 2018, which is eight years from now, before it is likely the Supreme Court will hear this," he says.
Other issues that Napolitano addressed during the wide-ranging interview:
- He believes American is in danger of becoming "a fascist
country," which he defines as "private ownership, but government
control." He adds, "The government doesn't have the money to own
anything. But it has the force and the threat of violence to control
just about anything it wants. That will rapidly expand under President
Obama, unless and until the midterm elections give us a midterm
correction – which everyone seems to think, and I'm in that group, is
about to come our way.
- Napolitano believes the federal
government lacks the legal authority to order citizens to purchase
healthcare insurance. The Congress [is] ordering human beings to
purchase something that they might not want, might not need, might not
be able to afford, and might not want -- that's never happened in our
history before," Napolitano says. "My gut tells me that too is
unconstitutional, because the Congress doesn't have that kind of power
under the Constitution."
- The sweetheart deals in the
healthcare reform bill used that persuaded Democrats to vote for it –
the Louisiana Purchase, Cornhusker Kickback, Gatorade Exception and
others – create "a very unique and tricky constitutional problem" for
Democrats, because they treat citizens differently based on which state
they live in, running afoul of the Constitution's equal protection
clause according to Napolitano. "So these bennies or bribes, whatever
you want, or horse trading as it used to be called, clearly violate
equal protection by forcing people in the other states to pay the bills
of the states that don't have to pay what the rest of us do,"
Napolitano says.
- Exempting union members from the
so-called "Cadillac tax" on expensive health insurance policies, while
imposing that tax on other citizens, is outright discrimination
according to Napolitano. "The government cannot draw a bright line,
with fidelity to the Constitution and the law, on the one side of which
everybody pays, and the other side of which some people pay. It can't
say, 'Here's a tax, but we're only going to apply it to nonunion
people. Here's a tax, and we're only going to apply it to graduates of
Ivy League institutions.' The Constitution does not permit that type of
discrimination."
- Politicians from both parties routinely
disregard the Constitutional limits imposed on them by the nation's
founding document, Napolitano says. "The problem with the Constitution
is not any structural problem," says Napolitano. "The problem with the
constitution is that those who take an oath to uphold it don't take
their oath seriously. For example, just a month ago in interviewing
Congressman Jim Clyburn, who's the No. 3 ranking Democrat in the House,
I said to him, Congressman Clyburn, can you tell me where in the
Constitution the Congress is authorized to regulate healthcare? He
said, 'Judge, most of what we do down here,' referring to Washington,
'is not authorized by the Constitution. Can you tell me where in the
Constitution we're prohibited from regulating healthcare.' Napolitano
says that reflects a misunderstanding of what the Constitution actually
is. "He's turning the Constitution on its head, because Congress is not
a general legislature," he says. "It was not created in order to right
every wrong. It exists only to legislate in the 17 specific, discrete,
unique areas where the Constitution has given it power. All other areas
of human area are reserved for the states."
- Napolitano
says that members of Congress infringe on Constitutional rights because
they fail to recognize its basis. "They reject Jefferson's argument, in
the Declaration of Independence, that our rights come from our Creator,
therefore they're natural rights, therefore they can't be legislated
away," Napolitano says. "They think they can legislate on any activity,
regulate any behavior, tax any person or thing, as long as the politics
will let them survive. They're wrong, and with this healthcare
legislation, they may be proven wrong, in a very direct and
in-your-face way."
http://newsmax.com/Headline/Andrew-Napolitano-barack-obama/2010/03/26/id/354008?s=al&promo_code=9A73-1
