To the Editor:
“Judicial Activism on Health Reform” (editorial, Feb. 2) calls Judge Roger Vinson’s ruling that the law is unconstitutional an example of overreach.
True overreach would be to find that within the power to regulate commerce among states is the power to force people to spend their money for a product favored by the federal government. What next, a law forcing people to buy G.M. cars in order to support the economy and protect the employment of federally subsidized workers? If the government can do the former it can surely do the latter.
If the commerce clause is interpreted that broadly, then there are no limits. If the government wants to nationalize the health system and be honest about the costs, present and future, then it should tax and borrow to support it. But please do not applaud the sophistry that forcing people to spend their private resources for a particular product, however attractive, can have anything whatever to do with regulating commerce among the states.
Ron Holdaway
Draper, Utah, Feb. 2, 2011
Note from KBJ: Amen.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 