Today’s ruling vindicates the constitutional first principle that ours is a government of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers. Like Judge Hudson in the Virginia case, Judge Vinson recognized that the individual mandate represents an unprecedented and improper incursion beyond those powers: the federal government, under the guise of regulating commerce, cannot require that people engage in economic activity.

And this is as it should be: if the only limit on congressional power were Congress’ own assessment of the wisdom of each assertion of such power, the Constitution would be obsolete — as would any conception of checks and balances. James Madison, the author of the Federalist Paper (51) explaining how man’s non-angelic nature requires explicit limits on those who govern, would spin in his grave. As even would Alexander Hamilton — perhaps the Framer most favorably disposed to strong central power — who cautioned that courts should not be in the business of evaluating the “more or less necessity” of a piece of legislation but rather define judicially administrable rules to guide (but also limit) Congress’s actions.

And so today’s ruling, in a lawsuit that now has 26 states as plaintiffs — with two others challenging the health care “reform” separately — represents the latest and most significant victory for federalism and individual liberty. This will not end until the Supreme Court has its say, but the tide is clearly running in freedom’s favor.

I will comment further once I’ve had a chance to read through the ruling.

Health Care Ruling a Victory for Federalism and Individual Liberty is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today POLITICO Arena askes:

How badly does today’s ObamaCare ruling set back the Democrat’s signature domestic achievement? Should Tenth Amendment enthusiasts take heart that other federal laws with which state officials disagree can be struck down?

My response:

A quick reading of Judge Henry Hudson’s opinion today striking the “individual mandate” provision of ObamaCare gives hope to those of us who have long urged, more broadly, for a restoration of limited constitutional government. As Judge Hudson put in granting summary judgment to Virginia, “the legislative process must still operate within constitutional bounds.”

The administration had argued that Congress had authority to enact and enforce the individual mandate to buy health insurance under its power to regulate interstate commerce. But Judge Hudson responded that “Neither the Supreme Court nor any federal circuit court of appeals has extended Commerce Clause powers to compel an individual to involuntarily enter the stream of commerce by purchasing a commodity in the private market.” Indeed, he noted, the administration’s reasoning could apply to “transportation, housing, or nutritional decisions. This broad definition of economic activity [to include inactivity] subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation.” The federal government remains, in short, one of delegated, enumerated, and thus limited powers, notwithstanding the leviathan that surrounds us today.

This is a significant setback for the administration, not least because Judge Hudson cites to a similar argument set forth by federal district Judge Roger Vinson in Vinson’s October 14 opinion denying the administration’s motion to dismiss the ObamaCare suit brought against it by 21 states, with more to follow. There will be more litigation on these issues, of course, but for today, at least, the Tenth Amendment and the limited government it implies are alive and well.

ObamaCare Comes Up against the Constitution is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

ObamaCare has always hung by an absurdity.  ObamaCare supporters claim that the Constitution’s words “Congress shall have the Power…To regulate Commerce…among the several States” somehow give Congress the power to compel Americans to engage in commerce.  This ruling exposes that absurdity, and exposes as desperate political spin the Obama administration’s claims that these lawsuits are frivolous.

This ruling’s shortcoming is that it did not overturn the entire law.  Anyone familiar with ObamaCare knows that Congress would not have approved any of its major provisions absent the individual mandate.  The compulsion contained in the individual mandate was the main reason that most Democrats voted in favor of the law.  Yet the law still passed Congress by the narrowest of all margins — by one vote, in the dead of night, on Christmas Eve — and required Herculean legislative maneuvering to overcome nine months of solid public opposition.  The fact that Congress did not provide for a “severability clause” indicates that lawmakers viewed the law as one measure.

Despite that shortcoming, this ruling threatens not just the individual mandate, but the entire edifice of ObamaCare.  The centerpiece of ObamaCare is a three-legged stool, comprised of the individual mandate, the government price controls that compress health insurance premiums, and the massive new subsidies to help Americans comply with the mandate.  Knock out any of those three legs, and whole endeavor falls.

Moreover, the individual mandate is not the law’s only unconstitutional provision.

These lawsuits and the continuing legislative debate over ObamaCare are about more than health care.  They are about whether the United States has a government of specifically enumerated powers, or whether the Constitution grants the federal government the power to do whatever the politicians please, subject only to a few specifically enumerated restraints.  This ruling has pulled America back from that precipice.

Federal Court Declares ObamaCare’s Individual Mandate Unconstitutional is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The political science blog Rule 22 has a post discussing the likelihood of repealing at least some part of ObamaCare.  Author Jordan Ragusa finds:

• If “the Republicans regain only the House in the upcoming election…the estimated likelihood of at [least] some repeal during the 112th Congress is 52 percent.”
• If “Republicans regain both chambers in the upcoming midterm…the estimated likelihood of at [least] some repeal is 59 percent.”
• If “Republicans regain unified control of government in 2012…the estimated likelihood of some repeal in the 113th Congress is 69 percent.”

Ragusa is predicting only that the odds are better than 50-50 that Congress will repeal some part of the law, such as the expanded 1099 reporting, which House Democrats have already moved to eliminate because small businesses find it so onerous.  He is not laying odds on whether Congress will repeal the entire law or its most important and unpopular provisions (i.e., ObamaCare’s individual mandate).

His post does shed light on the likelihood of repealing the individual mandate, however.  As the below graph shows, the probability of repealing any provision of major legislation rises in each of the next five Congresses (i.e., over the subsequent 10 years).  After that point, the probability of repeal begins to fall.

Note that this graph shows the instantaneous probability of repeal.  The cumulative probability is the area under the curve, and increases monotonically over time.  Thus the probability that Congress will repeal some part of ObamaCare by 2020 is more than 13 percent.

Ragusa therefore concludes:

the newly enacted law will be most “at risk” not in the next Congress, but a decade from now.  So sit tight.

Also noteworthy is that Ragusa presents only the probability of legislative repeal.  The prospect that the courts may invalidate all or part of the law increases the probability that some day, ObamaCare will no longer be on the books.

The Likelihood of Repealing ObamaCare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Most people know about the individual mandate in the new health care bill, but the bill contained another mandate that could be far more costly.

A few wording changes to the tax code’s section 6041 regarding 1099 reporting were slipped into the 2000-page health legislation. The changes will force millions of businesses to issue hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of additional IRS Form 1099s every year. It appears to be a costly, anti-business nightmare.

Under current law, businesses are required to issue 1099s in a limited set of situations, such as when paying outside consultants. The health care bill includes a vast expansion in this information reporting requirement in an attempt to raise revenue for an increasingly rapacious Congress.

In a recent summary, tax information firm RIA notes the types of transactions covered by the new 1099 rules:

The 2010 Health Care Act adds “amounts in consideration for property” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(1)) and “gross proceeds” (Code Sec. 6041(a) as amended by 2010 Health Care Act §9006(b)(2)) to the pre-2010 Health Care Act categories of payments for which an information return to IRS will be required if the $600 aggregate payment threshold is met in a tax year for any one payee. Thus, Congress says that for payments made after 2011, the term “payments” includes gross proceeds paid in consideration for property or services.

Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.

Tax CPA Chris Hesse of LeMaster Daniels tells me:

Under the health legislation, the IRS could be receiving billions of more documents. Under current law, businesses send Forms 1099 for payments of rent, interest, dividends, and non-employee services when such payments are to entities other than corporations. Under the new law, businesses will be required to send a 1099 to other businesses for virtually all purchases. And for the first time, 1099s are to be sent to corporations. This is a huge new imposition on American business, costing the private economy much more than any additional tax that the IRS might collect as a result.

There appears to have been little discussion before this damaging mandate was slipped into the health bill and rammed through Congress, but a few business groups did raise concerns. Here’s what the Air Conditioner Contractors of America said:

The House bill would extend the Form 1099 filing requirement to ALL vendors (including corporate) to which they pay more than $600 annually for services or property. Consider all the payments a small business makes in the course of business, paying for things such as computers, software, office supplies, and fuel to services, including janitorial services, coffee services, and package delivery services.

In order to file all these 1099s, you’ll need to collect the necessary information from all your service providers. In order to comply with the law, you would have to get a Taxpayer Information Number or TIN from the business. If the vendor does not supply you with a TIN, you are obligated to withhold on your payments.

Private transactions are the core of a market economy, and the source of America’s growth and prosperity. Now the federal government is imposing a vast new web of red tape on perhaps billions of these growth-generating private exchanges.

For what purpose? So the spendthrift Congress can shake a few extra bucks out of private industry? The business sector is the generator of America’s high living standards, but most federal legislators just see it as a kitty to be raided or a cow to be milked dry.

I’m stunned that there wasn’t a broader debate before such a costly mandate was enacted. If it goes into effect, it will waste vast quantities of human effort in filling out forms, reworking computer systems, collecting and organizing data, and fighting the IRS. The struggling American economy can’t afford anymore suffocating tax regulations. This mandate is a giant deadweight loss. It should be repealed.

Costly IRS Mandate Slipped into Health Bill is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Supporters of ObamaCare are shifting into full-denial mode.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) recently told an incredulous town-hall crowd that ObamaCare does not, in fact, require you to purchase health insurance.

Rep. Wasserman Schultz’s announcement came as a surprise to those of us familiar with the bill, which added to Subtitle D of the Internal Revenue Code a new Chapter 48, whose first section (Section 5000A) is titled, “REQUIREMENT TO MAINTAIN MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE” (see p. 126; all-caps in original).  Subparagraph (b)(3) even provides for “PAYMENT OF PENALTY” if you don’t comply with the “REQUIREMENT.”

ObamaCare’s supporters are still looking for ways to hide what they’ve done.

Repeal the bill.

Mandate Denial is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Now that the Obama health plan is law, more than a dozen states are asserting that Congress has exceeded its Commerce Clause power in imposing a mandate on individuals to purchase health insurance from private companies. No doubt, individual citizens will challenge the individual mandate on their own behalf.

States are also asserting that the threat to withhold all Medicaid payments if the states do not set up health insurance exchanges and enact other regulations amounts to coercion and unconstitutional commandeering of states by the federal government.

No one who opposes ObamaCare should put their faith in the Supreme Court to strike down an act of Congress, no matter how unprecedented and unconstitutional it may be. Nor should those who support ObamaCare be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold these provisions.

Legal challenges cannot take the place of political action. The Court hates to strike down popular legislation, but if the legislation is unpopular, one or both houses of Congress have changed parties and only a filibuster or presidential veto is preventing repeal, then the Court may feel more comfortable upholding the Constitution.

On ObamaCare, Don’t Put Your Faith in the Courts is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today Politico Arena asks:

Do the 13 state attorneys general have a case against ObamaCare?

My response:

Absolutely.  It will be an uphill battle, because modern “constitutional law” is so far removed from the Constitution itself, but a win is not impossible.  There are three main arguments.  (1) Under the Constitution, as properly interpreted, Congress has no power to enact such a plan.  (2) The plan conscripts state governments into carrying out and paying for federal mandates.  And (3) the individual mandate amounts to an unlawful capitation or direct tax.

The first argument will almost certainly lose, because under post-1937 readings of the Commerce Clause, Congress can regulate anything that “affects” interstate commerce, which at some level is everything.  Under modern “constitutional law,” that’s what we’ve come to – under the pressure of FDR’s infamous Court-packing scheme, a Constitution authorizing only limited government has been turned into one that authorizes effectively unlimited government.

The second argument has promise: In New York v. United States (1992) and Printz v. United States (1997) the Court held that the federal government could not dragoon state legislatures or executives into carrying out and paying for federal programs.  Yet that is just what’s at issue here with the “exchanges” that states are required to establish.  To be sure, the states can “opt out,” but as yesterday’s suit argues, with so many people already on the Medicaid rolls, that option is effectively foreclosed.  Indeed, the new bill will force millions more on to the Medicaid rolls, which is one of the main reasons these states, already strapped by Medicaid expenditures, have brought suit.  Florida alone estimates that the added costs will grow from $149 billion in 2014 to $938 billion in 2017 to over one trillion dollars by 2019.

The third argument holds the most promise.  ObamaCare compels individuals to buy insurance from a private company (why stop there? why not cars from GM?), failing which they will be required to pay a tax (fine?).  This is an unprecedented expansion of Congress’s power “to regulate interstate commerce.”  But even if it were to pass the modern Commerce Clause test, the tax should fail because it’s not apportioned among the states in accordance with their population.

Let’s be clear, however.  This suit was brought because the 13 states (and I predict more will follow) see the handwriting on the wall.  ObamaCare will mark the effective end of federalism as we’ve known it, will bankrupt the states, and, because of that – here’s the clincher – is but a  stalking horse for federal single-payer health care in America.  This suit will keep the issue alive until November, when the American people will have a chance to weigh in.

The States Respond to ObamaCare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

From the invaluable Tim Carney:

The Obama team regularly dismisses opponents as industry lackeys. The Democratic National Committee blasted out e-mails this week warning that “for every member of Congress, there are eight anti-reform lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill” and “Congress is under attack from insurance lobbyists.”

But drug industry lobbyists, according to Politico, spent the weekend “huddled with Democratic staffers” who needed the drug lobby to “sign off” on proposals before moving ahead. Meanwhile, we learn that the drug lobby is buying millions of dollars of ads in 43 districts where a Democratic candidate stands to suffer for supporting the bill. The doctors’ lobby and the hospitals’ lobby are also on board with the Senate bill.

So the battle at this point is not reformers versus industry, as Obama would have you believe. Rather, it is a battle between most of the health care industry and the insurance companies.

(And the insurers are not opposed to the whole package. On the bill’s central planks — limits on price discrimination, outlawing exclusions for pre-existing conditions, a mandate that employers insure their workers and a mandate that everyone hold insurance — insurers are on board. They object mostly that the penalty is too small for violating the individual mandate.)

Read the whole thing.

Obama’s Populism a Hoax: ObamaCare Is a Sop to Big PhRMA is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The Associated Press reports:

Buyers, beware: President Barack Obama says his health care overhaul will lower premiums by double digits, but check the fine print…

The [Congressional Budget Office] concluded that premiums for people buying their own coverage would go up by an average of 10 percent to 13 percent, compared with the levels they’d reach without the legislation…

“People are likely to not buy the same low-value policies they are buying now,” said health economist Len Nichols of George Mason University. “If they did buy the same value plans … the premium would be lower than it is now. This makes the White House statement true. But is it possibly misleading for some people? Sure.”

Nichols’ comments are also misleading — which makes the president’s statement not just misleading but untrue.

Under ObamaCare, people would not have the option to buy the same low-cost plans they do today.  That’s the whole problem: under an individual mandate, everybody must purchase the minimum level of coverage specified by the government.  That minimum benefits package would be more expensive than the coverage chosen by most people in the individual market.  Their premiums would rise because ObamaCare would take away their right to choose a more economical policy.

Note also that the CBO predicts premiums would rise by an average of 10-13 percent in the individual market.  Consumers who currently purchase the most economic policies would see larger premium increases.

Finally, the Obama plan would also force millions of uninsured Americans to purchase health insurance at premiums higher than current-law premium levels, which they have already rejected as being too high.  Their premium expenditures would rise from $0 to thousands of dollars.  Yet the CBO counts that implicit tax as reducing average premiums, because those consumers are generally healthier-than-average.  Only in Washington is a tax counted as a savings.

AP: Obama Misleads Voters about ObamaCare’s Effects on Premiums is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Massachusetts state treasurer and recent Democrat Timothy Cahill has harsh words for the health plan foisted on his state and the identical plan that President Obama is trying to foist on the nation.  From The Boston Globe:

“If President Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” Cahill said in a press conference in his office.

Echoing criticism leveled by congressional Republicans in recent weeks, Cahill said, “It is time for the president, the Democratic leadership, to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan that does not threaten to bankrupt this country.”

[T]he state’s health insurance law…Cahill said, “has nearly bankrupted the state.”

Cahill said the law is being sustained only with the help of federal aid, which he suggested that the Obama administration is funneling to Massachusetts to help the president make the case for a similar plan in Congress.

“The real problem is the sucking sound of money that has been going in to pay for this health care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that we’re being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through” Congress.

Commonwealth Connector, the independent state agency established to help residents find the health insurance, has “totally failed,” to create competition and connect people with affordable insurance, Cahill said, pointing out that 68 percent of the residents it serves receive subsidized care.

“We haven’t done anything about driving down costs,” Cahill said. “We haven’t helped small business. We haven’t changed the way we pay for health care and the way we deliver it.”…

Asked for solutions today, Cahill said he would seek to “level the playing field” between hospitals that charge different rates for similar procedures, seek to increase competition by allowing health insurance companies plans to sell plans across state lines, and would slash benefits mandated under state law.

For more on the Massachusetts health plan, see “The Massachusetts Health Plan: Much Pain, Little Gain.”

Massachusetts Treasurer Blasts RomneyCare and, Equivalently, ObamaCare is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

"Father of the Individual Mandate" Mitt Romney

The former nickname came from National Journal or The Wall Street Journal, I’m not sure which.  The latter nickname comes from Institute for Health Freedom president Sue Blevins.

See here for details on an upcoming event in Dallas where Goodman’s National Center for Policy Analysis will play host to Romney.

It should be an interesting event.  With all 40 Republican members of the U.S. Senate, including moderates like Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), voting to declare an individual mandate unconstitutional…with 35 states moving legislation to block an individual mandate…with the Heritage Foundation rebuking an individual mandate…and with Virginia’s Democratically controlled Senate approving legislation to block an individual mandate…well, Romney may have a tough road to hoe with the conservatives who typically attend NPCA events.

‘Father of HSAs’ John Goodman Plays Host to ‘Father of the Individual Mandate’ Mitt Romney is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• A real stimulus: To create jobs, repeal the corporate-income tax.

• As if times weren’t hard enough: The individual mandate on health insurance would impose high implicit taxes on low-wage workers. For more on this, read the new Cato study on burdens the health care legislation will place on the poor.

• Hot off the press: New issue of Regulation magazine looks at lessons from the financial crisis and property rights.

• Even though the government is running massive deficits, interest rates and inflation are low. So, what’s the problem?

• Podcast: “Bernanke’s Conceit” featuring Mark A. Calabria.

Wednesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Suppose you’re a family of four at or near the federal poverty level.  Under current law, if you earn an additional dollar, you get to keep around 60-70 cents.

Under the House and Senate health care bills, however, you would get to keep maybe 38 cents.  Or 26 cents.  Or maybe just 18 cents.

The following graph (from my recent study, “Obama’s Prescription for Low-Wage Workers: High Implicit Taxes, Higher Premiums”) shows that under the House and Senate bills, the combination of (1) a mandate tax and (2) subsidies that disappear as income rises would impose implicit tax rates on poor families that reach as high as 82 percent over broad ranges of income.

This graph actually smooths out some rather bumpy implicit tax rates that spike as high as 174 percent.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the public saw that too-generous government subsidies can actually trap people in a cycle of poverty and dependence.  President Obama and his congressional allies seem not to have learned that lesson.

How ObamaCare Would Keep the Poor Poor is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

According to sources within HHS cited by Heritages’ Dan Lips, a congressionally mandated report on the persistence of academic effects from the federal Head Start program was completed in draft form in 2008, but, nearly two years later, has not seen the light of day. A further follow-up report, to have been released in 2009 and covering persistence of effects through the 3rd grade, has also failed to materialized. Lips’ sources say the draft they saw in ’08 showed no lasting effects.

This timeline meshes with what I was told in a July, 2008 e-mail exchange with a researcher familiar with the studies. The 1st grade report was indeed expected to be completed that summer — one and a half years ago. So where is it?

Could it be, as Lips’ sources seem to imply, that its results were not flattering to the very expensive federal preschool program and that this is not something HHS officials want the public to know? There’s one way to find out:  HHS, release the studies.

This is all rather important, what with the Obama administration seeking to lavish many additional billions on large-scale government pre-K, despite the paucity of results we’ve seen from such programs to date.

Has HHS Buried Reports on ‘Head Start’? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

That’s the conclusion of economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad, who write in Forbes:

Unfortunately, the health care bills moving through Congress could curtail medical innovation. Imposing price controls on drugs and treatments–or indirectly forcing their prices down by means of a “public option” or expanded public insurance programs–would reduce the incentive for innovators to develop new treatments.

Proposed reforms could also retard business model innovation–an area where innovation is weak. Congress has already used its control of Medicare to limit the growth of specialty hospitals. A nationally mandated insurance package would severely curtail innovation in payment methods and insurance products, which have the potential to improve the coordination and delivery of health care services.

The health care debate should address more than just covering the uninsured and controlling costs. When the U.S. generates medical innovations, the whole world benefits. That is a virtue of the American system that is not reflected in comparative life expectancy and mortality statistics.

The op-ed is based on the authors’ Cato Institute policy analysis, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation.”

ObamaCare Threatens Innovation is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Senate Democrats now appear to be jettisoning the idea of creating a new government program to snuff out compete with private insurance companies.  It was an audacious proposal from the start, as it made their health care plan even more left-wing than the Clinton plan, which voters soundly rejected for being too statist.

Yet it was always a sideshow that helpfully distracted the Left, the Right, and the mainstream from what shrewd Democrats and their allies at AHIP have really wanted all along: an individual mandate forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance under penalty of law.

As I argue in this Cato study, an individual mandate gives government more (and more immediate) control over Americans’ health care than even the so-called “public option” would.  As it has in Massachusetts, an individual mandate will allow government to control what kind of insurance you buy, how much you pay, how insurers pay doctors, where doctors report to work, how doctors practice medicine, and what kind of medical care you get.

The question now is whether the Left, the Right, and the mainstream will recognize the Senate health care bill for what it is: a massive $450 billion bailout for private insurance companies that will drive health insurance premiums and taxes higher while reducing quality, all for the benefit of a small cadre of Democrats with a preternatural need to control other people’s health care.

(Cross-posted at Politico‘s Health Care Arena.)

Curtain Call for the ‘Public Option’ Sideshow is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Ezra Klein defends an individual healthcare mandate against charges that it’s unconstitutional, and what’s striking to me is that the argument seems awfully wobbly even if you’re on board with a lot of the post–New Deal jurisprudence about the scope of federal power.  Sez Ez:

The summary is that you can look at the individual mandate as a tax, which is constitutional, or as a regulation forcing private actors to engage in a certain transaction, much like the minimum wage, which is also constitutional. I’ve also heard scholars mention auto insurance, which is an obvious analogue, and the Americans With Disabilities Act, which proved that the government can order businesses to install ramps, despite the fact that the constitution doesn’t explicitly give the federal government jurisdiction over entryways.

This doesn’t seem like the right level of analysis. Some taxes and regulations are within the ambit of federal powers; that doesn’t mean anything capable of being so described is. Some things not explicitly and specifically mentioned in Article I are nevertheless necessarily implicit in the enumerated powers; that doesn’t mean anything is. Auto insurance seems like a poor analogue because it’s a condition of access to government-maintained roadways. Ezra also mentions Massachusetts’ individual mandate, which seems rather beside the point in a discussion of the scope of Congress’ Article I powers. But bracket that. Even if you think the federal commerce power legitimately extends to legislation like the ADA, there’s intuitively a world of difference between saying that a commercial enterprise providing services to the public must provide them in such-and-such a fashion and insisting that private persons have to engage in a specified type of transaction just by dint of being alive. I don’t think the best reading of the Commerce Clause encompasses either, but it’s not that hard to conceive a reading that extends to the former but not the latter. I stress this just because I don’t think you have to be a libertarian or have a very restrictive view of the legitimate scope of federal power to believe there’s a genuine question here. The real form of the argument here looks an awful lot like: “Look, we’ve stretched commerce…between the several states so absurdly already, why are we even pretending it might be found to exclude anything?”

The Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Let’s simplify things and say there are essentially two parts to the health care bills moving through Congress: an individual mandate that would effectively nationalize health care, and a government-run program that would explicitly nationalize it slowly, over time.

One explanation for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) including the government-run program — supporters call it a “public option”; I prefer Fannie Med — in the Senate bill is that Fannie Med’s popularity is on the rise.  Another explanation is that Reid had to include it to remain majority leader and get left-wing Nevadans to work for his re-election.

But a third explanation, not inconsistent with the others, is that the savvier Democrats know that all they need to nationalize health care is an individual mandate.  So they’ll let Fannie Med take a beating, and then pass the more sweeping individual mandate when opponents are too exhausted and distracted by their “victory” over Fannie Med to notice.

(Cross-posted at Politico‘s Health Care Arena.)

Are Savvier Democrats Playing Rope-a-Dope? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Dear members of Congress: If you’re not going to read the bills you pass,  at least read the Constitution. Don’t fret; it’s short and written in plain English.

• Richard Rahn: Pay members of Congress more. (Or less, depending on their performance.)

• NYC: “The city that never smokes.” A proposal to ban lighting up in New York’s parks has exposed the puritanical agenda behind the crusade against smoking.

• Tyler Cowen: With health care costs high and rising, government mandates to buy insurance would make many people worse off.

• Podcast: “Pay Czar Cuts Checks“

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog