MEMORANDUM
TO: Reporters and Editors
FROM: Antonia Ferrier for Senator Hatch
DATE: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
RE: Orchestrated White House Attacks Against State AG Challenges to Unconstitutional Individual Mandate
The White House and its Washington allies are orchestrating a series of attacks against those Attorneys General across the country who are taking action against the unconstitutional “individual mandate” in the highly-unpopular health care bill. They have also started attacking Sen. Hatch’s opposition to the unconstitutional individual mandate by looking back at legislation that was introduced back in the 1990s as an alternative to HillaryCare.
First off, Senator Hatch applauds the efforts of those Attorneys General across the country to fight the unconstitutional individual mandate. He has been responsible by examining the constitutionality of a key component of this highly-unpopular and deeply-flawed health care bill. The question is why hasn’t the Administration? It’s a little hard to believe the Administration on this, when they’ve hardly been consistent. In fact, if memory serves, then-candidate Obama was against the individual mandate – even chastising then-Senator Clinton for her support of it.
Furthermore, Senator Hatch supported this alternative to President Clinton’s massive federal takeover of the American health care system, because his number one priority was the defeat of yet another big government assault on health care that the people of Utah overwhelmingly opposed. In the intervening years, he went back and carefully examined, in close consultation with constitutional experts, the legal problems with many of the bills being supported at the time. This needed to be done, because of the hasty nature of the debate at the time. It is simply a fact that Congress has never imposed this kind of mandate before. Senator Hatch concluded, as would any intelligent scholar of the Constitution, that this federal mandate requiring Americans to either purchase health insurance or face a punitive tax exceeds the authority the Constitution has given to Congress.
It’s regrettable that instead of examining the legality of their health care monstrosity, the Administration and its allies are simply going on a smear campaign. Here’s a piece of advice: don’t think you are right 100 percent of the time with everything you do. Arrogance and power are a terrible mix, and one the American people will not support.
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