Reports from today’s oral argument in the U.S. Supreme Court have not been good for the Obama administration. Since the focus of today’s two-hour argument was the constitutionality of the individual mandate, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli was grilled early and often – particularly by Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered by some pundits as a potential “swing-vote” in this case – about whether Congress has the authority to create commerce and then regulate it. This questioning follows the arguments presented by AFLC’s Co-Founders and Senior Counsel Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi in their lawsuit against Obamacare and in their “friend-of-the-court” brief filed in this case in the Supreme Court: does Congress have the authority to regulate inactivity?
Under Obamacare, the federal government can force people under penalty of federal law to engage in economic activity; and once they are engaged in this activity, Congress then seeks to regulate them under the Commerce Clause. As Muise stated today in an interview with OneNewsNow (click here to listen to the interview):
“[This application] flips the Commerce Clause on its head and it really gives the federal government unbridled power to regulate all aspects of human existence.”
There is no doubt that the government is compelling commerce, and this should give the Supreme Court serious concerns about the constitutionality of the individual mandate.