FIVE SENATORS PAUL, LEE, CRUZ, JOHNSON, HELLER TO OPPOSE “OBAMACARE LITE”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
Four Republican senators broke ranks with their party’s leadership
Thursday, vowing to vote against the GOP’s latest healthcare “reform”
bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017.
Senators Rand Paul (Ky.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Ron Johnson (Wis.), and
Mike Lee (Utah) issued a joint press release upon announcing their
decision to oppose the legislation being dubbed Trumpcare.
“Currently, for a variety of reasons, we are not ready to vote for
this bill, but we are open to negotiation and obtaining more information
before it is brought to the floor,” the quartet explained. “There are
provisions in this draft that represent an improvement to our current
healthcare system but it does not appear this draft as written will
accomplish the most important promise that we made to Americans: to
repeal Obamacare and lower their healthcare costs.”
Senator Paul issued a separate statement, stating that he didn’t run
on passing “Obamacare lite.” “The current bill does not repeal
Obamacare. It does not keep our promises to the American people. I will
oppose it coming to the floor in its current form, but I remain open to
negotiations,” the self-described constitutional conservative added.
“It looks like we’re keeping Obamacare, not repealing it,” Paul commented during an interview on MSNBC.
Paul isn’t new to the fight to prevent party powerbrokers from
shoving voluminous bills down the throats of the rank and file. Just one
day prior to the release of the healthcare proposal — a bill hammered
out behind closed doors by Republican leadership — Paul announced his
intention to reintroduce a bill that would require senators to read
legislation before they voted on it.
His “Read the Bills” measure would mandate that all lawmakers be
given time to study the legislation they are being asked to consider by
requiring that all bills be made public for one day for every 20 pages
of content prior to being placed before the body of the Senate for its
deliberation.
“Legislation is too often shoved through Congress without proper
hearings, amendments, or debate, as the secrecy surrounding the Senate’s
health care bill and the pressure to vote for it with little time to
fully evaluate the proposal once again remind us,” Paul wrote in a
statement published Wednesday.
The Better Care Reconciliation Act, as released by the Republican
Party leadership on Thursday, comes in at 142 pages, thus Paul’s bill
would give legislators eight days to plow through the proposal before
being asked to impose it on the American people.
In the coming days, many journalists (perhaps even this one) will
analyze the Republican version of federally imposed healthcare. There is
a place for such an exercise. The whole of the matter comes down to one
issue and one issue only: Does the Constitution grant power to the
Congress (or the president or the federal courts) to legislate in the
area of healthcare? If the answer to that question is “No,” which I
assure you that it is, then the next step along the critical path of
constitutionalism is the 10th Amendment, which states: “The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the
people.”
The next step, then, is for the states to reject any attempt by the
federal government — regardless of the party affiliation of the act’s
authors — to impose upon them any programs or policies associated with
the healthcare provided within them.
If it were properly understand and exercised, this tack is the
“rightful remedy” to all unconstitutional acts of the federal
government.
It is now as it was when Thomas Jefferson described it as such in the Kentucky Resolutions.
Jefferson wrote, speaking of efforts by many federal lawmakers to
usurp the authority rightfully retained by the states in the
Constitution:
determined, as it doubts not its co-States are, to submit to
undelegated, and consequently unlimited powers in no man, or body of men
on earth: that in cases of an abuse of the delegated powers, the
members of the general government, being chosen by the people, a change
by the people would be the constitutional remedy; but, where powers are
assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the
rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right in cases not
within the compact, (casus non fœderis) to nullify of their own
authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that
without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and
unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
While the commitment made by Senators Paul, Cruz, Johnson, and Lee is
commendable and they are to be lauded for their fidelity to their oaths
of office, the fact is, state legislators have taken a similar oath to
“support the Constitution” (see Article VI).
How can one be honestly said to support the Constitution other than
by insisting that its intent be followed, its enumeration of powers be
adhered to by federal officers, and that the states unapologetically
reject every act made by those elected federal officials that exceeds
the authority given to them in that sacred document?
Should these senators lose the battle against Trumpcare, the war to
restore this Republic and the Constitution is not lost. State lawmakers
must step into the breach and refuse to enforce all 141 pages of that
bill, standing firmly within the territory of the 10th Amendment.
According to sources on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) is pushing to get a vote on the bill before lawmakers
head home for the Fourth of July holiday.
It is ironic, for sure, that McConnell is leaning on lawmakers to get
Trumpcare — the Republicans’ repackaged proffering of ObamaCare —
passed before Independence Day, a day our ancestors asserted their right
to be free from a government “pursuing invariably the same Object
[which] evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.”
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Four
conservative Republicans came out against the plan too, including
Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Lee and Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson