ObamaCare Should Be Declared Unconstitutional

ObamaCare Should Be Declared Unconstitutional
by JBS President John F. McManus

The U.S. Constitution states in Article I, Section 7 that all bills for raising revenue must “originate in the House of Representatives.” The Senate may add an amendment to any revenue bill but “the power of the purse” is held by the House. The Founding Fathers felt that matters involving taxation should be in the hands of the House, the body of Congress closest to the people. Good thinking!

In 2009, the House passed a measure (H.R. 3590) designed to ease the process of first-time home ownership for military personnel and also to increase by a small amount a tax for some corporations. H.R. 3590 was a tiny six-page bill, very small in comparison to many other pieces of legislation. But it involved revenue and had to be originated in the House.

Senator Harry Reid and his team over in the Senate then hijacked the measure. They erased the entire text in H.R. 3590 and kept only the bill’s number. They then inserted 906 new pages that constitute the text of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). All of what appeared in the new 906 pages had nothing to do with home purchases by service personnel or taxation for some corporations. In other words, the massive new insertion was not an amendment; it was a wholly new bill.

Skip ahead to 2012 and recall that the Supreme Court ruled that the law now known as ObamaCare was a tax measure, specifically its portion levying a fine on any persons who refuse to purchase health insurance. Disagree with this ruling if you wish, but realize that this decision presents a huge problem for the supporters of ObamaCare — Harry Reid certainly included. There is no way that H.R. 3590, now widely known as ObamaCare, can be constitutional because it is a revenue generator that originated in the Senate, not in the House.

Law professor John Eidsmoe has pointed out in his “The Origination Clause” appearing in The New American for May 5, 2014 that there are “at least 86 cases making their way through the courts” challenging the legitimacy of ObamaCare. Perhaps the measure, called a “train wreck” by former Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) who helped to author it, will be declared unconstitutional because of being born in the Senate. Such an outcome would be welcomed by Americans who treasure liberty and esteem the worth of the U.S. Constitution.

So-Called Free Trade Costs Sovereignty

So-Called Free Trade Costs Sovereignty
by JBS President John F. McManus

A friend who favors free trade agreements (such as those now being negotiated by U.S. officials and their European and Pacific Rim counterparts) insists that these “partnerships” pose no threat to our nation’s sovereignty. He likens the proposed agreements to the beneficial free trade arrangement existing among our 50 states. But, without him realizing it, my friend’s argument actually made the case for my real concerns about such agreements.

In 1955, Dow Chemical executive Lewis Lloyd wrote a book calling for protectionism. Formerly a solid cheerleader for free trade, he found through experience that, if free trade among nations is actually conducted — such as what exists among our 50 states — eight conditions must be present. And the final of his eight conditions was the need for “world government” and a loss of sovereignty.

In his Tariffs: The Case For Protection, Dr. Lloyd stated that there must be comparable taxes, a single monetary system, uniform business laws, similar business ethics, freedom of movement by workers from place to place, freedom from the threat of war, and an overseeing world government.

All of what Lloyd saw as necessary can be found in the state-to-state relationships within the United States — except a world government. Here, unencumbered trade is regulated by the federal government under the U.S. Constitution, and there’s no loss of national sovereignty. Should free trade be established nation-to-nation, claimed Dr. Lloyd, there would be a need for an overall governing body with a superior constitution superseding the government structure established in each nation. In other words, there would be a need for a world government superior to each national government and it would function just as our own federal government does vis-à-vis the states. But the national sovereignty of the nations involved in this free trade would have been canceled.

Consider the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), two pacts that U.S. leaders are now hammering out with equivalent foreign officials. Approval of the TTIP would tie the U.S. with the EU that was sold to Europe’s mostly unsuspecting national leaders as a pact designed merely to enhance trade. But it has become dominant over its 28 formerly independent nations. Consider: In 2003, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus warned that the EU was leading to “no more sovereign states in Europe.” In 2004, EU leaders proposed an overall constitution which claimed that it “shall have primacy over the law of member states.” In 2004, a leader of Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party stated that the EU “has turned into a political union which is changing our basic laws and traditions.” And in 2007, former German President Roman Herzog lamented that “84 percent of the legal acts in Germany stemmed from Brussels.” The EU has become a super government dominating Europe’s once-sovereign nations.

Should Senate ratification of the TTIP be accomplished, the U.S. will have duplicated Europe’s catastrophic blunder and essentially joined the EU, losing its national sovereignty in the process. Ratification of the TPP would likewise be a huge mistake, and lead to a corresponding loss of U.S. national sovereignty. But the interesting point here is that the beneficial state-to-state relationships within our nation do not support my friend’s claim that nation-to-nation free trade agreements will be similarly beneficial. They would instead constitute a severe dilution of national sovereignty, as the EU has accomplished in Europe. The relationships generated by so-called “free trade agreements” prove that sovereignty will be lost. Americans should let their representatives and senators know that free trade partnerships must be rejected, along with rejecting Trade Promotion Authority that would facilitate congressional passage of any such free trade partnerships.