“they are expressly prohibited from doing anything“
“The federal government has spent the last two centuries-plus willfully ignoring the Constitution. With ever-increasing frequency and intensity, the Feds have drifted further and further from their charter. There is no longer even a pretense of pretending to care whether or not what DC wants the government to do – is an expressly enumerated Constitutional thing that the government is supposed to be doing.
We are currently in the midst of the Republican wing of the bipartisan DC Establishment Party struggling mightily to keep its word to We the People – and repeal the ongoing, rolling train wreck that is Obamacare. A chief self-imposed impediment for the DC GOP – is with what to replace Obamacare. I.e.: What alternative government medicine nightmare mess should be erected – to be substituted for the current government medicine nightmare mess.
Nigh nowhere in the now-decade long DC debate about any of this – is the Constitution even glancingly referenced. So I’ll do it. I’ll posit a quite simple query to DC:
Where in the nation’s founding document is the federal government expressly empowered to do anything about anything having to do with medicine – or the private insurance market that has arisen to mitigate the payment for medicine?
A plain reading of the parchment quite readily reveals: Nowhere. Nowhere in the Constitution is the government empowered to do any such thing. Do a word search of the Constitution – for “medicine,” “health care,” “doctor,” “insurance” – and key word having anything to do with health and wellness. Search results: Zero. For all of the above.
So the Constitution’s Ninth and Tenth Amendments kick in. They stipulate that if the Feds aren’t expressly empowered to do something – they are expressly prohibited from doing anything. That thing – is the purview of the states and the people.
As annoying, obnoxious and incredibly damaging to our republic (we’re not a democracy) as DC ignoring the Constitution is – things can be even worse.”
-Seton Motley (blogger)
