In your April 2 editorial
"ObamaCare
and the Constitution," you seem to assume that Virginia's lawsuit
against ObamaCare is an attempt to "nullify" federal law.
This is not the case.
Virginia concedes that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause ensures that
federal law trumps state law when there is a direct conflict between
laws. However, a federal law will only trump when it is constitutionally
grounded. In our lawsuit, Virginia is asking the federal courts to
declare the federal health-care act unconstitutional based on Congress's
use of the Constitution's Commerce Clause to impose an individual
health insurance mandate on citizens.
Certainly the Commerce
Clause gives Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states,
but for more than 220 years it has been applied to affirmative acts of
commerce voluntarily entered into by individuals. If someone is not
buying insurance, then—by definition—he is not participating in
commerce. How, then, can the government use the Commerce Clause to
regulate noncommerce? Virginia contends that it cannot.
If Congress has the power
to force Americans to buy health insurance and thereby subsidize those
people without it, then there is no limit to its power to force people
to engage in other forms of commerce for the benefit of others. For
example, Congress could force Americans to buy General Motors cars to
save jobs in the face of lagging auto sales.
This lawsuit is an
argument over how much the federal government can twist the wording of
the Constitution so as to transfer even more power from the people to
itself. It is about drawing a line on the bounds of the federal
authority. Ultimately, it is about liberty itself.
Providing health care for
all citizens is a laudable and worthy goal, but conceding our very
freedom and the freedom of future generations to achieve that goal is a
dangerous and inequitable exchange.
Ken Cuccinelli
Attorney General of Virginia
Note from KBJ: Thank God for the likes of Ken Cuccinelli.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 