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Does the commerce clause justify healthcare reform?

  • Thread starter Thread starter zredding1
  • Start date Start date

No, I rather think my point was that there was indeed a "backing" for making the argument that it's what was intended, as a direct counter to your contention there was none "whatsoever."

I think the guy who wrote it describing exactly what he had in mind while writing it is a pretty darn good "backing" as to its intent. Don't you?
 

Our Constitution was written collectively by 55 men of which 39 signed it.

No one man wrote it. No one man can be given credit for it.

And even if you want to extend to one man more credit than he deserves, he would not be first to be bitten in the posterior by his own words down the road as others see them differently than he may have seen them in a certain light at a certain time of the day under certain prevailing conditions in existence at that time.
 
you are unlearned in constitutional history. tell us what backs the current interpretation-and don't tell me its current law, I want an honest defense of the FDR court's massive activism

I know you think the FDR court was some underhanded group but even the court before the new deal allowed for congress to enact positive regulations on commerce. What I'm curious is what your view is exactly. You say the power can be used to address conflicting state trade interests which is factually correct. So do You view the power as solely dormant in nature? Or would you say the text of the constitution permits positive regulations?
 
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Fair enough but let me beg the question what is this power in your mind is it simply a negative restriction on the states or is it a little more?
 
Fair enough but let me beg the question what is this power in your mind is it simply a negative restriction on the states or is it a little more?

It was intended to stop states from putting up trade barriers against each other or interfering with commerce passing through their jurisdictions.

What I've always wanted to see is a challenge along these lines -- the power to regulate commerce among the several states is an exclusive federal power. If indeed it includes the power to regulate things like food quality, etc., then those are powers states don't have. Yet they do it.
 
I don't think thats necessarily true I would argue that while yes federal law is supreme in the constitution our system of federalism allows enough flexibility to allow states to regulate within their domain so long as their regulations don't seek to nullify or displace federal law.
 

It must be true, else states would be able to put up their own tariffs against imports and "regulate" along those lines as well.
 
It must be true, else states would be able to put up their own tariffs against imports and "regulate" along those lines as well.

There is no question that Congress has supreme power over commerce both nationally and internationally obviously the states could not regulate those things you mention, but the state does have authority to regulate intrastate commerce to the degree that it does not interfere with valid congressional regulations.
 

Anything that the clause gives the federal government the power to do is exclusive to the federal government.

I know full well what happens in practice. I'm referring to an untested challenge implied by reading so much into the clause.
 
I want the federal gov't out of the health insurance regualton business completely. The federal gov't is the primary reason that we have no portable health insurance now, since each state does their own thing by federal mandate.
 
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Read an article about this the other day. Just seeing some other opinions.

No, the interstate commerce clause was intended to keep the states from imposing trade barriers, and that is all. It does not give congress the power to meddle in the health care decisions of the citizens of the states.
 
that's idiotic. It was designed to prevent a state such as ohio from interfering with goods being sent from say Pittsburgh to Saint Louis by imposing tariffs on those goods as they came down the Ohio river

Federalist # 42, The Powers Conferred by the Constitution Further Considered:

 
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