Since Chief Justice made the momentous ruling on the
Affordable Health Care Act, journalist from all facets of the political
spectrum have written their interpretation of what it means for future social
legislation. Some consider that the C.J. Roberts has given a warning to
President Obama’s Administration that even though this ruling was favorable,
that the ruling did not concern the merits of the act but whether the act
itself was constitutional. The Chief Justice in his statement said, that it was
not the Supreme Court’s job to protect the people from the consequences of
their political choices, in essence saying that he was not in favor of the law
itself, but as far as its legality it was constitutional.
Some political pundits have ascribed a Machiavellian motive
to the Chief Justice’s action, arguing that if he had voted with Kennedy and
the arch conservatives, Scalia, Alito and Thomas in holding the entire act
unconstitutional, this would have galvanized President Obama’s base into
uniting to reelecting him to a second term. However by reaching out and finding
that the individual mandate was a tax, and joining with the four other justices
in upholding the act and mandate constitutional, he has given the far right the
issue of the President passing a tax upon the middle class, while at the same
time weakening the Commerce Clause which as a result of the finding, has lost
some value for future legislation.
There were many headlines declaring this a victory for
President Obama, but as Paul Krugman stated in an Op-Ed in the New York Times
on Friday June 28, 2012, the real winners are ordinary Americans, people like
you. Every American who would have found health insurance unaffordable but will
now receive financial help and every American with a preexisting condition who
would have been flatly denied coverage in many states now has insurance
coverage. The winners from the Supreme Court decision are your friend s, your
relatives, the people you work with, and very likely you. For almost all of us
stand to benefit from making America a kinder and more decent society.
The campaign against health care reform is now in full swing
with millions of dollars being set aside for ad campaigns denouncing the value
of the health care bill with mispresentations and outright lies. Who can forget
the rumors that the act had death panels?
The cost of the legislation will be exaggerated and while Republican
Congressmen would not hesitate to increase defense spending by 50% and add a
standing military of 100,000 as Mitt said he wanted to do, at an estimated cost
of two trillion dollars over the next ten years, they question the cost of
keeping American healthy.
Within hours of the Supreme Court’s upholding the
constitutionality of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a bill that
historians will compare to FDR’s Social Security and LBJ’s Medicare, Mitt
Romney and Congressional Republicans
pledged to intensify their efforts to repeal it. While members of congress
rushed to portray it as a tax upon the middle class, Mitt Romney was unable to
make this argument because as governor of Massachusetts he signed a similar
health bill with an identical individual mandate which he labeled a penalty and
not a tax.
As of July 11, 2012, the House Republicans have tried for
the 32nd time to repeal the affordable Health Care act, which they know is a
futile act since even if they were successful in the house which they weren’t,
they would not be able to get it passed in the senate. Instead of wasting
taxpayer money and time on frivolous actions, house Republicans should start
working on the Jobs Bill that was sent to them last September. This Jobs Bill
can immediately put state and local government workers back to work, along with
construction workers who can start working on building and repairing public
infrastructure. Are the Republican House members intentionally withholding
support for the jobs bill during this election year in order to keep the
economy weak and fragile? No they wouldn’t do that, would they?
FIST BUMP TIME
