So I was having a polite political discussion with a somewhat conservative friend of mine. Who by his own admittance is not the most knowledgeable in the political arena.
Discussion was over the subject of the affordable care act's subsidized health plans, his argument being that they were unconstitutional. And my response was not argue that point. (Not that time anyway) and to point out the logical problem with his argument.
That being that if the ACA's subsidies are unconstitutional and so are farming subsidies and oil subsidies, because they're all applied in much the same way there a set of rules on who can and cannot receive subsidies, if you qualify you get regardless of who you are.
He actually did cede to me that this was a very good point and that my normal debate rule of "if you can't counter the glaring problem in your idea then you don't really have an idea." Should take a fact. But during the discussion I also mentioned that conservatives had also said that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. This of course led into a discussion about that.
A discussion in which a very quickly came to the root of the issue. My friend along with a great number of conservatives and liberals that I now. Do not in fact understand what it means to be unconstitutional or constitutional. Because the affordable care act was passed by Congress, signed by the President of the United States of America. And in the individual mandate itself went before the Supreme Court of the United States of America who game gets constitutional under the law.
And as one of the justices said in a later interview "outside of a full on constitutional amendment, you don't get much more constitutional than the affordable care act." Because of course most laws and never go before the Supreme Court. My friend was still little unconvinced but I could see that he was grasping some of the concept. So I put it to him in a logical a simile.
It's like playing chess. A chess game in which the Democrats and the president through political maneuvering put the GOP in check. Passing the affordable care act, structuring and in a way that it couldn't be defunded. An operating inside the rules of the United States government in which it would take a two thirds majority to avoid a veto from the president if the GOP tried to repeal the affordable care act. The last ditch attempt of the GOP to stop the ACA, was to send it before the Supreme Court and make an argument that the individual mandate was unconstitutional.
Let me make this clear this action in and of itself, is not completely without merit just like my friends thoughts on subsidies are not completely without merit. But both would have very far-reaching and drastic implications. But the comparison is that sending the individual mandate before the Supreme Court was the chess equivalent to consulting the rules to ensure that the Democrats and the president had moved to the chess pieces in a legal manner.
And so we came to the point, which was to say that at this point arguing that the individual mandate was unconstitutional was tantamount to saying. "You can't put me in checkmate that's cheating"
Because you see is someone were to ask me where my political standing was out answer rationalism. Almost everything in the world has a definition, and I am a big fan of definitions. Now like most people I don't always use words correctly but the very definition of the word constitutional means that with few exceptions you can play the law and you can say that is constitutional or that is unconstitutional.
Now this of course doesn't mean that people don't pass unconstitutional laws of course it and most the time they know their unconstitutional and they're doing them solely political gain.
And in truth I eagerly await the Supreme Court's answer to the question of the affordable care act's subsidies. Because I of course am not a constitutional lawyer like the president United States Barack Obama. I'm not a Supreme Court justice of the United States of America, so while I can take an educated guess I can't definitively say whether or not something is constitutional or not.
But I can definitively say until otherwise it dictated by the supreme court of the United States of American or constitutional amendment stating otherwise. That the affordable care act as it stands now is constitutional.
-
By. William C Moore.
No comments:
Post a Comment