"I challenge anyone..."

Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II :

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that "The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with Foreign Nations, and among the several States..." For more than 221 years, the Commerce Clause has been applied to affirmative acts of commerce voluntarily entered into by individuals.

The individual mandate in the health care bill imposes fines and penalties if a citizen does not engage in commerce. Nothing could be more antithetical to freedom.

If Congress has the power to force Americans to buy health insurance and thereby subsidize other people, then there is no limit to its power to force people to engage in other forms of commerce for the benefit of others. For example, Congress could force Americans to buy cars from General Motors to save jobs in the face of lagging sales.

I challenge anyone who doubts this analogy to explain how the federal government could compel one purchase (health insurance) but not the other (automobile).

I've been challenging everyone on that for two weeks, and no one even bothers to answer. The fact is, it's plain and simply unanswerable.

The frightening thing is that the people who want the government providing health care don't seem willing to even address the issue of government power and constitutional authority. They won't, for the most part, even make a pretense of answering the question. Many of them profess not to even understand how someone would be concerned. I find myself hoping that they lose their plans and doctors first...


(Mr. Cuccinelli is the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and is a party to the multi-state lawsuit against Obamacare.)