Monday, March 19, 2012

The Individual Mandate: An Unprecedented Assertion of Government Power

Adam J. White for The Weekly Standard here makes the case that the Supreme Court of the United States has quite a history of ruling against sweeping innovations which have no precedent, which means ObamaCare just might not pass muster:

"[T]he [Obama] administration’s latest actions encapsulate precisely the concerns embodied in the Roberts Court’s decisions regarding Sarbanes-Oxley, Guantánamo, and preelection book banning, as well as the New Deal Court’s unanimous refusal to simply acquiesce to FDR. Unprecedented powers asserted by the government threaten to give rise to stark abuses of power​—​some foreseeable, perhaps many more unforeseeable. Faced with similarly novel assertions of government power in previous cases, the Court drew a constitutional line in the sand, out of an abundance of caution. The Court’s review of the individual mandate poses no less a challenge, and merits no less a response."

We're all in deep trouble if the individual mandate survives.