Follow-Up from Virginia Health Care Ruling
As might be expected, there are numerous articles this morning following up on Judge Hudson’s ruling in the Virginia case against the health care law. Secretaries Holder and Sebelius have an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that “striking down the individual responsibility provision means slamming the door on millions of Americans like Gail O’Brien, who’ve been locked out of our health insurance markets” – emotional arguments which some may view as tangential (at best) to the core legal issue of whether the Constitution permits the federal government to force every American to buy a particular product. Other interesting points of note from this morning’s stories:
- The Brookings Institution’s Henry Aaron told a Bloomberg reporter that striking down the mandate would lead to MORE federal spending: “The only way this works is if they offer an adequate subsidy and it’s debatable whether the law currently does that.” Some would question the premise that the “solution” to striking down a law due to Congressional overreach is yet more government spending.
- In the same Bloomberg piece, the liberal Aaron admitted that the law’s constitutionality is “well short of a certainty,” demonstrating that even the left is being forced to consider constitutional questions that Speaker Pelosi herself didn’t think serious earlier this year.
- Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett was quoted in the New York Times: “All the insiders thought [the law’s constitutionality] was a slam dunk…Maybe a slam dunk like weapons of mass destruction were a slam dunk.”
- Speaking to Politico, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley called Monday’s ruling “very thoughtful—not a screed…I don’t see any evidence this is motivated by Judge Hudson’s personal beliefs….Anybody who’s dismissing this opinion as a political screed has obviously not read the opinion.”
There were additional stories from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. In addition to its legal analysis above, the New York Times had several pieces – a general overview, a story on how the ruling will affect implementation, and an editorial that (shockingly) supports the law. But perhaps most interesting of all is the Times’ piece on the political impact, which notes that “from a political standpoint, the only case [against the health care law that really matters is the one Mr. Obama lost on Monday,” and argues that “the ruling puts Mr. Obama on the defensive over health care at a time when he would rather be talking about the economy” and that the President “has been unable to bring the public to his side” on the issue. (On a related note, yesterday’s ABC News poll found that 52 percent disapprove of the health care law, while only 43 percent support it, the largest gap in support “since the latest debate over health care reform began in earnest in summer 2009.”)