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Last updated: Thursday, May 24, 11:59 a.m.
Opinion

Op-Ed: Dems’ health care reform bill violates our constitutional rights

By Jonathan Zappala
Posted on March 25, 2010, at 3:45 a.m.

Adolf Hitler never received more than 44 percent of the popular vote in Germany, yet he still became chancellor. He was a socialist and used backroom deals with German leaders to come to power. The current health care reform bill is also socialist, and to the surprise of many in the Democratic Party, it is also unpopular.

Last Thursday, a Fox News poll showed 55 percent of Americans are opposed to the bill, and 35 percent are for it. These poll numbers are despite the fact that most network news shows lean toward support of the bill.

Over eight months, Congress has been playing games with releasing what is in the bills, having meetings behind closed doors — which President Obama promised several times would be on C-SPAN — and seeking to pass bills with reconciliation and Slaughter Rule procedures that were not intended for sweeping legislation such as this.

The same Fox News poll shows only 31 percent of Americans think the House of Representatives and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were playing by the rules in passing the bill, which might explain why Congress’ approval ratings continue to be low.

Pelosi did it by the book in the end, but not without kickbacks to buy off votes and an executive order “limiting abortion” that really means nothing. Back in October, she was asked by a reporter for CNSNews.com, “Where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” She brushed off the question without answering it by asking the reporter twice if he was serious before moving onto a different reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, later issued a statement saying it was “not a serious question.”

Pelosi and her spokesman are wrong; this is the most important question in the entire health care debate. The current bill mandates every American buy health insurance or get on Medicaid if they meet the requirements. If they don’t, they must pay fines to the IRS, which has been granted the power to enforce this mandate. But the Constitution does not give enumerated or implied power to the federal government to make a person buy something, let alone enforce this with a fine. This would give a requirement to be an American citizen, and it is unconstitutional to have to buy something to be a citizen.

Democrats are quick to point out we have to buy car insurance if we wish to drive. But that is only if we have a driver’s license and vehicle and drive on public roads. Someone who does not have or do these cannot be stopped by a police officer while they are walking down the street and be fined if they do not show proof of car insurance.

After President Obama signs this bill into law, it should be deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Arguments can be made that it violates Fifth Amendment protections and treats states unequally.

If I have it all wrong, and President Obama’s plan is going to make things better in America, I would like to know why it has to be done with backdoor deal-making like the Louisiana Purchase and Cornhusker Kickback. If it is good for us and we should want this, why couldn’t we have known earlier what was in it?

Secret socialist deals that were supposed to be good for the people led to the rise of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian governments in the world’s history. If our elected representatives will vote for the removal of liberties, I am glad the Constitution still stands in the way to protect them.

Jonathan Zappala is a senior psychology student.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010, 3:45 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.

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  • Craig

    This article is so chock full of misstatements even starting with the first sentence. If Hitler was a socialist, then why was his first act to kill all the labor leaders in Germany? He wasn’t a socialist, that’s why.

    You are halfway correct on the executive order, only because the Hyde amendment was going to be enforced under both versions of the bill. (You might want to look up the Hyde amendment, I don’t think your average tea partier will know what that means).

    The Constitutionality question isn’t a serious question. The Constitution doesn’t grant the power to enact social security, medicare, the Voting Rights act, the Civil Rights act of 1965, corporate welfare, farm subsidies, federal highway spending, etc. We do not live in a nation where if the Constitution doesn’t mention it, we cannot do it. That would seriously tie the governments hands in a changing world. Every time you pay taxes, you are being forced to buy something that you may never use (fire protection service, bombs, roads if you don’t have a car, and see the list above.) You’re a psychology student, obviously not a Constitutional scholar, or even a political science student.

    The fact that you continue to compare socialism to naziism supports the idea that you’re not a historical scholar either.

  • remedialone

    Cornhusker kickback isn’t in the bill. Also, the reporter’s question wasn’t a serious question (unless of course the reporter was woefully ignorant) because the constitutionality of this and most things can be justified by the ICC which has been upheld time and time again by the SCOTUS.

    I am not saying there aren’t legitimate reasons to oppose the bill but these two examples don’t illustrate them at all. Also, never rely on popularity polls for justification either because they can quickly change. For instance, Polls published yesterday show that a majority of Americans support the bill and only 42% oppose. Does that mean that since now Americans want the bill you are for it? No, because popularity of something shouldn’t change anyones opinion of it.

  • Adam M.

    Putting my own feelings of the healthcare bill aside, I find it incredibly ironic conservatives like Zappala are suddenly so concerned about the Constitution. Where has he been the last eight years? The Bush administration waged an illegal war on Iraq based entirely on lies, employed heinous acts of torture on detainees held on the slightest suspicion of terrorist ties, and engaged in a widespread, illegal wiretapping program that all but obliterated citizens’ right to privacy. All of these acts, I might add, constitute the epitome of conservatives’ dreaded “Big Government,” yet for the duration of the Bush administration, Republicans like Zappala said nothing. Their concerns about “Big Government” seem to center around taxes and nothing more. As it is, the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill is such a corporatist-oriented legislation (essentially a bailout for the health insurance industry), one would expect “free-market” conservatives to favor it. It can hardly be called socialism.

  • Jim Steichen

    @remedialone:
    – [quote]…because the constitutionality of this and most things can be justified by the ICC which has been upheld time and time again by the SCOTUS.[/quote]
    Don’t be too sure about this. Just because the Supreme Court has been wrong all these years does not mean that they do not know how to correct themselves!

  • remedialone

    Jim,

    Any departure from the ICC would be that of an “activist” judge… which if I remember the rhetoric, Conservatives are against. Also, I would like to point out that John Adams passed a bill requiring private citizens to purchase Health insurance just to preempt the “What would the founding fathers have thought about this” faux outrage.

  • remedialone

    Also, fifth amendment? I think you might have the wrong amendment there. I have seen the arguments of the 9th and 10th, but that one is totally in left field. Do you just make stuff up as you go along or did you actually research your op ed piece?

  • Jun

    yup.

    glad someone else said it first, but yup.

    I think it was written this way simply to elicit response.

  • Hankmeister

    Hitler was a socialist and so was Goebbels and even Mussolini. Each made explicit claims to being a socialist, therefore they are socialists despite whatever you think. They knew exactly what they were and they weren’t bashful in defending their national socialism against eeeeevil capitalists. Unfortunately whackademia can’t handle the truth that even the word Nazi was essentially an acronym for NATIONAL SOCIALIST German Workers’ Party. What part of “national socialism” does whackademia don’t get?

    You ask, why did the Nazi socialists kill other socialists? The answer is quite simple … FRATRICIDE. The Nazis couldn’t have other competing socialist systems since they believed their form of socialism was superior to other socialist theoroes. And if I’m not mistaken there are also over 28 different definitions for socialism and they are all pernicious when transformed into political and governmental systems.

    But it’s no coincidence that America’s liberal socialist Democrats, Nazis, Chi-coms and Sov-coms HATE AND DESPISE free market “capitalist” systems. Denying reality in this case serves no purpose than to create “right-wing” boogey man (the Nazis) when they were indeed left-wing collectivist-socialists. And the fact Nazis had a sense of national pride and patriotism doesn’t make them “right-wing” any more than the Soviet’s sense of national pride and patriotism made them “right-wing.” The industry of Nazi Germany may have been privately owned on paper, but in reality all production and profit was governed by the central committees in Berlin.

    You can’t paper over the reality that the Nazis were socialists. Nice try, though. If you want to refer to them as being fascists, too, fine, they were socialist fascists. Nothing contradictory about that except in the halls of hollow-headed whackademia.

  • chris

    So your saying the ideology liberalism is the same regardless of which country you are in? Actually hitler did mention being a socialist because it was in the name of the party, noit because of his ideological belies…..Mussolini was a fascist and hitler believed in Nazism or Fascism….not a socialist and anyone who claims that is way off.