History in the making, indeed. The 40,000 constituents who signed the Senate Conservatives Funds Repeal ObamaCare Pledge in the first 24 hours since the House passed Obamacare suggest that historic efforts are about to be made to kill this bill before it can inflict its intended and unintended damage.
Heres a roadmap of priorities for Obamacare opponents in and out of Washington, to get us from this dispiriting week to January 2013:
1. Challenge the constitutionality of H.R. 3962. Work to invalidate its requirement that all individuals purchase a good or servicein this case, health careas a condition of being alive, something the federal government has never forced its citizens to do. Contest the federal governments ability to unload an unfunded mandate onto states, many of which are experiencing budgetary crises and couldnt afford a new permanent entitlement even if they wanted one.
2. Encourage states to file lawsuits against the bill. Twelve states have already pledged to do so, including Virginia, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, Alabama, North Dakota, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Utah, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. H.R. 3962, unlike many other comprehensive bills passed before by Congress, fortunately contains no severability clause that leaves the remainder of the bill intact if one part is struck down in court. Thus, getting a court to nullify just one part of this bill would overturn the entire thing. Take these court challenges all the way to the Supreme Court. read more »