Democrat-Led Colorado Backs Lawsuit Calling Obamacare Unconstitutional

Colorado has become the 20th state to support a federal lawsuit filed last week by a Texas doctor to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

It’s only the third state with a Democratic governor to do so.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, a Republican, signed onto an amicus brief last week, showing support for the effort to overturn the law based on the U.S. Constitution’s Origination Clause, which says that all bills that raise revenue must begin in the Senate.

Obamacare, the suit contends, began in the House of Representatives.

“If the Origination Clause means anything, it must mean that the ACA is unconstitutional,” the brief reads, as reported by the Colorado Observer.

But exactly where the controversial law began is itself a point of controversy. The Observer notes that the U.S. Justice Department contends that it did indeed begin in the House, originally as H.R. 3590, which was concerned with housing tax credits for veterans. Once in the Senate, however, Obamacare opponents say its language was entirely stripped and replaced with what became the ACA.

“By a voice vote of 416-0, the House passed the bill on October 8, 2009, and the enrolled version was eight pages long,” the brief reads. “About one month later, on November 19, 2009, the Senate struck every single word of H.R. 3590, deleted any reference to members of the military or home-ownership tax breaks, and substituted a 2,074-page ‘amendment’ that we now know as the ACA.”

Pacific Legal Foundation is also challenging the law based on an Origination Clause argument in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the penalty for not signing up for health care under the new law is considered to be a tax.

Via: The Daily Caller

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Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) Delivers the Weekly Republican Address, Saturday November 7, 2013

If the president won't scrap this law, shouldn't he delay it for all Americans before it can do further harm? Families who work hard and play by the rules deserve some basic choices, fairness and relief. That's why the House passed legislation to delay the individual mandate for all Americans and let you keep the plan you like; and it's why House Republicans will continue to give the law the scrutiny it deserves.

Via: GOP.gov

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GOP Launches Major Push to Capture Blue State Senate Seats

Republicans are targeting blue states with competitive races in an effort to win back a majority in the Senate, Politico reports. 

The GOP currently holds 45 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' 55, so it needs to win only six of those elections. Seven states currently represented by Democrats were carried by Mitt Romney in 2012, but Republicans want to increase their chances, so they are also targeting other close elections in purple states, and even some blue ones.

Republicans hope to capitalize on anti-Obamacare sentiment as the program has suffered glitches in its website and in trust in a White House that promised people they could keep their insurance and that premiums would not rise.

Even if a GOP hoped-for backlash against Obamacare doesn't pan out, Politico notes that Democrats could be forced to pull money from bigger races to spend money on less-consequential contests.

Republicans already hold a majority in the House of Representatives.

New York Times statistician Nate Silver has been predicting a possible GOP turnover of the Senate since early this year. Silver's predictions were made months before the disastrous rollout of Obamacare. 

Among the states Politico sees as most likely GOP prospects are Michigan, Iowa, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado, Oregon and Hawaii.

With Sen. Carl Levin retiring in Michigan, Republicans there have rallied behind state Sen. Terri Lynn Land. In Iowa, Sen. Tom Harkin also announced his retirement. No clear leader has emerged there.

In New Hampshire, Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen won in 2008 with only 52 percent. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown has now moved his primary residence to the Granite State and has been toying with challenging Shaheen.

Via: Newsmax
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House Stenographer Has Meltdown During Vote On Shutdown

The house stenographer tonight had a meltdown and ran to a microphone and began yelling on the floor of the House of Representatives tonight.

Update: This quote from her sums up the rant.

“The Constitution would not have been written by Freemasons. They go against God!”

Via Weasel Zippers

Shutdown Continues, House Passes Solutions, President Still Refuses to Negotiate

Beginning on October 1, 2013, the federal government entered a partial shutdown due to a lapse in funding. Prior to this, the House of Representatives offered and passed multiple funding measures to keep the government open. The Senate and President Barack Obama, however, disagreed with some of the bill’s components. Instead of working with House leaders, they chose to let the government shut down over their insistence on a continuation of last year’s funding levels to support the expansion of Obamacare. 

I know many Americans are concerned about the government shutdown and it can be disconcerting when our nation’s political leaders cannot get along.

This is not the first time that our country has had a divided government or experienced a shutdown due to disagreements between the President and congressional leaders of opposing parties.  However, in prior instances, both the President and respective leaders have found ways to engage in regular discussions to resolve issues.

President Clinton and Speaker Newt Gingrich were fierce opponents publically, as were President Reagan and Speaker Tip O’Neill, but they always found ways to work together to advance our nation’s interests and their respective policy agendas.

What’s different today is that President Obama has repeatedly and preemptively announced his refusal to negotiate with congressional leaders about operations of the federal government or the level of spending under his Administration.

Congress has a constitutional responsibility and authority to oversee federal spending and the Executive Branch’s execution of the law, including addressing our nation’s unsustainable debt levels and the problems associated with ObamaCare and its implementation.

The President himself has acknowledged some of the failures of ObamaCare by granting waivers to big business, big labor and other special interests, but insists on leaving individual Americans and families exposed to its serious flaws. He has granted these waivers unilaterally even though they are neither authorized by law nor consistent with his enumerated powers in the Constitution.

And now, because of President Obama’s continued refusal to work with Congress, the government remains partially closed.

Via: Issa.house.gov

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Would Canceling Obamacare Be a Blow to Democracy?

A republic, not a democracy

Three of our esteemed commentators insist that, if the U.S. House of Representatives somehow repeals major parts of Obamacare, doing so would undermine “democracy.”

Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and famous author, titles his column, “Our Democracy Is at Stake”:

This time is different. What is at stake in this government shutdown forced by a radical Tea Party minority is nothing less than the principle upon which our democracy is based: majority rule. President Obama must not give in to this hostage taking — not just because Obamacare is at stake, but because the future of how we govern ourselves is at stake.

He is echoed on CNN by two professors of government in an article titled, “GOP shutdown’s extremism worst in U.S. history.” It’s by Ellen Fitzpatrick, a professor of modern American history at the University of New Hampshire; and Theda Skocpol, the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, and director of the Scholars Strategy Network. They echo Friedman:

The federal government shutdown is a virtually unprecedented move by a political minority committed to rolling back one of the most significant legislative achievements in recent American history. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 was passed by two houses of Congress after 14 months of debate. Opponents then challenged the law’s constitutionality and lost that battle in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Less than five months later, American voters re-elected by a 5 million-vote majority margin a president who stood foursquare behind the Affordable Care Act. In so doing, the electorate rejected a GOP presidential candidate who promised its repeal.

Apparently the democratic processes by which Americans make choices and govern themselves are not acceptable to extremists in the House of Representatives who seek to halt government or have their way. They would have Americans see their actions as a patriotic and high-minded defense of liberty. As the shutdown loomed, several GOP congressmen and analysts took to the airwaves to trivialize the significance of the House vote.

Via: California Political Review

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Shutdown Day 3: No Compromise, No Negotiations From Obama

President Barack Obama laid the blame for the government's partial shutdown at the feet of House Speaker John Boehner, escalating a government-shutdown confrontation that was leading headlong into a potentially more damaging clash over the nation's borrowing authority.

Speaking at a construction company in Washington's Maryland suburbs Thursday, Obama cast Boehner as the captive of a small band of conservative Republicans who want to extract concessions in exchange for passing a short-term spending bill that would restart the partially shuttered government.

"The only thing preventing people from going back to work, and basic research starting back up, and farmers and small-business owners getting their loans — the only thing that is preventing all that from happening right now, today, in the next five minutes, is that Speaker John Boehner won't even let the bill get a yes or no vote because he doesn't want to anger the extremists in his party," Obama said.

The dispute over the shutdown deepened worries about a bigger problem rumbling ever closer — a mid-October deadline for increasing the government's borrowing limit before it runs out of money to pay creditors. The U.S. Treasury warned on Thursday that failure to raise that debt ceiling could spark a new recession even worse than the one Americans are still recovering from.

"The president remains hopeful that common sense will prevail," the White House said in a written statement after an unproductive meeting at the White House about the political standoff that has idled 800,000 federal workers and halted an array of services Americans expect from their government.

Boehner, R-Ohio, complained to reporters that Obama had used the meeting simply to declare anew that he won't negotiate over his healthcare law.

House Republicans, pushed by a core of tea party conservatives, are insisting that Obama accept changes to the healthcare law he pushed through Congress three years ago as part of the price for reopening all of government. Obama refuses to consider any deal linking the healthcare law to routine legislation needed to extend government funding or to raise the nation's debt limit.

Via: Newsmax

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House of Representatives Listens to the American People on Obamacare

A bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives voted to stop Obamacare while funding the government to prevent a shutdown. This is a powerful development for the cause of freedom, showing that our representatives are listening to the concerns of the American people about this unworkable, unfair, and unpopular health care law.

When this partisan law was rammed through more than three years ago, its backers publicly stated they could not bother to read the legislation—or give the American people time to read the bill. “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what’s in it,” as the former Speaker of the House famously remarked.

The people who passed Obamacare didn’t listen to the American people—because, as polling since Obamacare passed has demonstrated, the American people don’t like the law one bit. All the reasons people don’t like Obamacare are the same reasons we need to stop its implementation—to prevent premiums from going up; to prevent massive new tax hikes; and to prevent people from losing their health coverage, or losing their jobs altogether.

Listening to the American people about stopping Obamacare should not be a partisan exercise. Real people have already been harmed by this misguided law. Every day brings new facts to light on how Obamacare will raise costs on struggling families, restrict access to doctors and plans they like, increase our debt, and damage our fragile economy. Congress should work together to protect American families from being hurt and instead work on commonsense reforms that expand health care choices and lower costs.

Today, the House of Representatives voted to stop Obamacare because it listened to people across the country. Here’s hoping the Senate listens to the American people as well.

Via: The Foundry

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Poll: Obama Is Even Less Popular Than Before 2010 Midterms…

The latest polling from Rasmussen Reports shows that President Obama’s net approval rating is lower today than it was two years ago. Today, Obama’s net approval rating among likely voters is minus-3 percentage points (48 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval), while his net approval rating among those who feel “strongly” (either way) is minus-14 points (29 percent approval to 43 percent disapproval).  On October 19, 2010, Obama’s net approval rating was minus-1 point (49 percent approval to 50 percent disapproval), while his net approval rating among those who felt “strongly” was minus-10 points (30 approval to 40 percent disapproval). 

So, over the past two years, Obama’s net approval rating has dropped 2 points (from minus-1 to minus-3), while his net approval rating among those who feel “strongly” has dropped 4 points (from minus-10 to minus-14).

In 2010, of course, Obama and his party’s low approval ratings, stemming mostly their having passed Obamacare against the clear will of the American people, led to the Republicans’ biggest electoral gains in the House of Representatives since before the release of Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart’s 1939 classic, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In that exceptional film, Jefferson Smith (Stewart’s character) reminds us, “Liberty is too precious a thing to be buried in books.”

Via: Weekly Standard

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The Origination Clause: Die Harder, ObamaCare!

Chief Justice John Roberts could begin his next Supreme Court decision regarding ObamaCare with the following statements: "Whoops, ObamaCare is unconstitutional.  As ObamaCare involves taxes, the House -- not the Senate -- was constitutionally responsible for originating ObamaCare."

If Roberts agrees with the Pacific Legal Foundation's (PLF) recent case against ObamaCare, then Roberts, as suggested above, could reverse his decision in June 2012 that most of ObamaCare is constitutional.  On September 11, 2012, PLF sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, alleging that ObamaCare violates the Constitution's Origination Clause, which reads as follows:

All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

PLF argues that ObamaCare's Individual Mandate, which Roberts labeled a tax in his June 2012 decision, significantly raises government revenue.  The Individual Mandate "taxes" individuals $695 and families $2,085 per year for not purchasing health insurance plans.  In Roberts' words, the mandate will produce "at least some revenue for the Government ... about $4 billion per year by 2017."  As PLF notes, ObamaCare involves multiple other taxes "estimated to increase federal revenue by $486 billion by 2019."  

Via: American Thinker

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What If There Is NO President by January 20th

I think America should be prepared for every sort of political gymnastics conceivable come Tuesday, November 6th, 2012.

Battalions of lawyers are set to spring into action if there is a hint that Obama may lose. Planning and preparations for such an eventuality have been in progress since the early days of the Obama Administration.

Tying the election up in the courts is the plan. And these people are serious!

So what happens if, indeed the US election is tied up in the judicial system come noon on January 20th, 2013?

“In cases where a President has not been chosen by January 20 or the President-elect “fails to qualify,” the Vice President-elect becomes Acting President on January 20 until there is a qualified President. If the President-elect dies before noon January 20, the Twentieth Amendment states the Vice President-elect becomes President. In cases where there is no President-elect or Vice President-elect, the Amendment also gives the Congress the authority to declare an Acting President until such time as there is a President or Vice President. At this point the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 would apply, with the office of the Presidency going to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, followed by the President pro tempore of the Senate and various Cabinet officers.” SOURCE:

OK. But how exactly is the President-elect and Vice-President-elect decided, I mean, legally decided. And here it gets cloudy and open to all sorts of legal challenges.
There are at least two schools of thought on that.

“Some commentators doubt whether an official President- and Vice President-elect exist prior to the electoral votes being counted and announced by Congress on January 6, maintaining that this is a problematic contingency lacking clear constitutional or statutory direction. Others assert that once a majority of electoral votes has been cast for one ticket, then the recipients of these votes become the President- and Vice President-elect, notwithstanding the fact that the electoral votes are not counted and certified until the following January 6.” SOURCE:

Via: Canada Free Press

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