Learning From Our Past, Repealing Healthcare Reform & Balancing The Budget: A Lesson From Massachusetts

Last week my home state (Oklahoma) became the 28th state to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate provision of the federal health care act. The fact that over 50% of the U.S. states are challenging the legislation in federal court pretty much shows where the American people stand on the issue. The question is, will it work?

We last visited this topic when discussing the Alien and Sedition acts signed by John Adams in 1798. The legislation was both racist and oppressive and obviously is no longer in place. For that, we can think the state of Massachusetts.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison saw the Alien and Sedition acts as being unconstitutional. Therefore Jefferson wrote a resolution for the state of Kentucky and Madison for Virginia declaring the unconstitutionality of the law and that their states had the right to not obey the law. However, Massachusetts saw the big picture and took a very unpopular stance.

Massachusetts made its own resolution stating to Kentucky and Virgina that all the states had agreed to the constitution and were thus bound to it. It went on to say that it wasn't up to the individual states to determine if something is constitutional or not. Imagine 50 different states today with 50 different interpretations of the law and the right to deem it constitutional or not. It would be complete anarchy.

Sure Oklahomans, along with 27 other states, have a legitimate beef against the government but what they're doing is very different than what Kentucky and Virginia did in the late 1700's. These states today are drafting legislation that will ultimately lead to judicial review. That my friends could be the way out of this mess we're in.

In 1803 the U.S. Supreme Court claimed the right to decide if a law is unconstitutional or night. It was at that point in time that our young nation saw the three aspects of the American government that our forefathers had put in place begin to function. It was President Adams and Congress (executive and legislative branches) that brought these unfair acts into law but it would also be the judicial branch that would repeal them. We owe that thanks to a man named John Marshall. We'll get to him in the next post on this topic.

Learning From Our Past, Repealing Healthcare Reform & Balancing The Budget: We've Been Here Before

A clear line was drawn in the political sand last year when Congress passed the Health Care Bill. Elections in November were a clear indication from the American population that the act of legislation was neither appreciated nor wanted. Now as the 112th U.S. Congress convenes with a Republican House majority its clear that the agenda is repealing the health care bill and balancing the budget. This isn't the first time we've faced legislation passed by Congress that the general public disapproved of and thought to be unconstitutional. Looking back through our past we may find a road map that leads to a repeal through the democratic process.

In 1798 John Adams signed the Alien and Sedition acts. Racially motivated the Alien acts made it extremely difficult for foreigners (particularly Catholics from France) to gain entrance and citizenship into the United States. They also gave the president the authority to removed anyone he so desired from the country if he "thought" them to be dangerous.

With such an controversial law in place (many people were fleeing to the U.S. to escape from France's revolution) and the public outcry rising up against it the Sedition act allowed for anyone to be imprisoned for speaking out against the government. There would be no exception to this law either as journalists, the grandson of Benjamin Franklin and even a U.S. Congressman were all locked up for being violators.

Thomas Jefferson had these laws in mind when he wrote, "I know not which mortifies most, that I should fear to write what I think, or my country bear such a state of things."

The Alien and Sedition acts are no longer laws of our country because they were in direct violation of Constitution of the United States. In the same way the new health care law violates the Constitution in two ways.

1. imposing a new mandate on individuals to obtain health insurance or face a penalty and
2. imposing on the states new costs by expanding Medicaid, which is a federal-state program.

So, how will the bill be reformed? We'll get to that in future posts but these two unconstitutional acts of Congress provide the road map we need.