by Steve Palmer

I don’t know if there are any values which are common to most Pennsylvanians, but if we want to look for some, the state motto seems like as good a place to start as any.  “Virtue, Liberty and Independence” was first used on a Coat of Arms designed by Caleb Lownes for Pennsylvania in 1778.  In this article, without delving into specifics, we will look at the idea of federally administered health care in the context of the the values expressed in Pennsylvania’s state motto.

Virtue

“…If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security…” , Samuel Adams

Let us look, first, at health care assistance as a two person transaction.  If I have wealth and my neighbor lacks it through no fault of his own, is it virtuous for me to give some of my wealth to my neighbor in order to assist him with paying for his health care?  Conveniently, we have a way of measuring wealth, so we know exactly how much harm is done and how much help is given.  I am harmed by as many dollars as I choose to gift to my neighbor.  He is helped by exactly the same amount.  Because my harm is accepted of my own free will, in exchange for the benefit of knowing that I have helped my neighbor to improve his station, it seems clear to me that this would be a virtuous transaction.

Now, we extend the transaction.  This time, my neighbor sees a man in need of health care passing by our homes.  My neighbor lacks the means to help, so he comes to my house and takes money from me, without my consent, to help the passer-by. Just as in the previous transaction, the amount of harm to me is exactly equal to the amount of help to the beneficiary, but since my action was compelled, I am deprived of the opportunity to be virtuous.  Further, since my neighbor has taken my property without my permission, his portion of the transaction is also lacking in virtue, no matter what he might claim about the nobility of his intentions.

Now, let us extend the scenario once more, replacing my neighbor with my home-owners’ association.  Additionally, let us assume that the home-owners’ takes a 10% processing fee out of the amount they take from me and give the passer-by only 90% of the total.  The alleged help to the beneficiary is now smaller than the amount of harm done to the donor.

At this point, we have a complete model. We can add local, state and federal governments, more donors and more recipients, without changing the basic outcome. When money is being funneled and skimmed by a central authority, the harm done to the donors necessarily exceeds the help given to the beneficiaries. This is clearly a net harmful transaction, not a virtuous one.

Additionally, for these transactions, there is another, unseen party who we have not considered. For each transaction, there is an opportunity cost. To what virtuous cause could that money have been put if it had not been given to the recipient? The unseen beneficiary is deprived of an outcome, and the donor is deprived of an opportunity to be virtuous.   These days, we talk about seniors being forced to choose between food and prescriptions.  Soon, we will talk, instead, about young parents being forced to forego braces and clothing for their children in order to meet their health care mandate.

Liberty

“It is certain that the most natural and human government is that of consent, for that binds freely, … when men hold their liberty by true obedience to rules of their own making. “, William Penn

We have seen that despite it’s proponents’ claims, a government funded health care program is on balance harmful to virtue, not helpful.  Moving on, is anyone’s liberty enhanced by a federal health care solution?  It is clear that compelling a donor to part with his money does not enhance his liberty in any way.  His action is coerced and resources which he might have used are made unavailable to him.

So if there is to be an improvement in Liberty, it must come on the part of either the beneficiary or of the administrator.

Let us start with the beneficiary.  Malthus wrote, in his famous Essay on the Principle of Population

“It may at first appear strange, but I believe it is true, that I cannot by means of money raise a poor man and enable him to live much better than he did before, without proportionably depressing others in the same class”.

I think an example of the effect he was getting at is this — In a market, if we could manage to find every person who has only ten dollars and give them each a hundred dollars instead, the market would adjust.  Ten dollar items that this group of people compete for would go up in price to one hundred dollars.  In fact, we already see this effect at work in health care and education.  Surely it is not a coincidence that two areas where the government meddles the most are fast out-pacing inflation in almost all other sectors.

Based on Malthus’ observation and our own, the prospect for actually increasing liberty for the recipients of the health funds is unlikely.  It is far more likely that the actual buying power of their available assets will stay roughly the same.

Now, we consider the plan administrators. Do their liberties increase as a result of a government run health care take-over?  Clearly, the answer to this is yes.  Plan administrators are given the power of life or death over the recipients of their funds and the power of the purse strings over the donors.  Perhaps this explains the century-long campaign our government has waged in effort to obtain this power?

Our (ostensibly) limited government, would become much less so as the administrator of all of our health considerations.  With regards to Liberty, then, the only party who benefits from a government run health plan is the only party who is supposed to be constrained.  As with virtue, we find that a government health care plan is harmful on balance.

Independence

“Over one’s mind and over one’s body the individual is sovereign.” , John Stuart Mill

The harmful effect of government health care on our independence is so painfully obvious that it almost doesn’t even merit a discussion.  As with Liberty, it is easy to see that the person being compelled to separate with the money he has earned is not having his independence enhanced.  Perhaps he is not made more dependent by this action, or perhaps he is, but at best his independence is unchanged.

Star Parker has written persuasively about Uncle Sam’s Plantation, saying,

A benevolent Uncle Sam welcomed mostly poor black Americans onto the government plantation.  Those who accepted the invitation switched mindsets from “How do I take care of myself?” to “What do I have to do to stay on the plantation?”

…

The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families.

Clearly, a person who relies on coerced hand-outs from others for his health care is not an in independent person.  Is there any reason to believe that dependence on government health care will be any less harmful then other forms of dependence?

“Our present condition is, Legislation without law; wisdom without a plan; a constitution without a name; and, what is strangely astonishing, perfect independence contending for dependence.”, Thomas Paine

Conclusion

The main claim of proponents of a government administered health plan is that society will somehow be a better place if we follow the example of Robin Hood and rob from the rich to give to the poor. They forget, though, that Robin Hood was a hero because he rebelled against unjust taxation, not because he was a thief.

By careful thought, we can see through their claim. Society cannot possibly be better by taking from one, skimming a little (or a lot) off the top, then giving to another. Why should we, in Pennsylvania, be sending our money to Washington for skimming, then on to pay for health care in other states? The amount of money that manages to escape from Washington’s clutches is always going to be (far) less than the money that went in, so clearly it could be put to be better, more virtuous use by avoiding Washington in the first place.

Our officials in Pennsylvania are currently working on a variety of Tenth Amendment related initiatives to resist the federal take care of our state’s health care system.  That effort is consistent with the values stated in our state motto.  >Contact your elected officials and let them know that you support these efforts.

Steve Palmer is the State Chapter Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Tenth Amendment Center.

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given

The pen that the President used has already been tucked away for it’s ‘historic value’. The bill has been printed with congressional approval and now that Barack Obama’s signature appears on it we have officially entered an age of unprecedented Federal control over the most tangible aspect of our human experience- our bodies.

It is also likely that printing presses are already churning out a form that you will someday find in your mailbox, the papers requiring you to sign away your medical authority to bureaucrats who make their assessments from the other side of the continent.

What is your emotional reaction to this new era? Trepidation? Despair? Grief over the loss of our constitutional republic? What will we do? What will you do?

Some will celebrate what they see as the passage of a ‘change’ bill, granting at long last access to health care so badly needed. Others like myself, are seeing an alarming parallel between the health care talking points released today and the lofty promises made at the beginning of the Iraq War. The track record of Federal power increases tell us that mandates like the one signed into law today are seldom a net gain for those outside of the political class.

Just as the Bush administration promised that the Iraq invasion would “pay for itself” through oil revenue, DC’s current crop of spinners claim that this unprecedented new health care bureaucracy will actually diminish the national deficit, though the actual amount we will pay in taxes won’t be known until Barack has exited the Oval Office. In 2003 ‘spreading democracy to the Middle East’ was similarly sold to the American people, with end results that look much different from that glorious initial pitch.

What we do now should not be centered around the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. Reacting with national solutions to Federal actions is simply playing their game. Have no doubt, someone with a Federal pay stub is ready and waiting with a plan to counter reactions, such as the Attorney’s General from a host of states who sued the Federal government 7 minutes after the bill was signed. It may even be the same brain trust that effectively parried those opposing health care reform at the grassroots level before the bill became law.

To repel the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, there is one solution that not only denies this new Federal mandate, but also future ones as well. Banding together in our respective sovereign states (yes, even California) and pushing back against those who are prepared to limit our choice of medical treatment is the starting point for resistance to a whole host of Federal mandates, on everything from light bulbs to what is in our children’s textbooks. We must assert our sovereignty as described in the 10th amendment.

State sovereignty is suddenly on the lips of many across the republic who recognize that the only way to stop the out-of-control Federal beast is to head it off at the pass- a.k.a. our state border. This the strategy of the state sovereignty movement- to respond using the tools so thoughtfully provided by the architects of our constitutional republic. Chief amongst those tools is the concept of nullification- not waiting for a US Supreme court decision for approval, but rather asserting that unconstitutional Federal mandates are null, void and of no force.

You, myself and everyone we know form the top of the food chain in the American system of government. It is up to We the People as sovereigns- not the Federal legislative branch- to honor out the intentions of our nation’s founders and see to it that the Federal beast remains within its strict limits. This will never be achieved by asking the beast, for once escaped from its confinement it will only seek to increase its current power.

We must cast a net over this rampaging Federal government from each of our 50 states and with the resolute solidarity of We the People, the animal we created will be returned to its cage.

Bryce Shonka [send him email] is media and grassroots director for the Tenth Amendment Center and state chapter coordinator for the California Tenth Amendment Center.

Copyright © 2010 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The interest of the current administration in creating a federal national health care program, has provoked discussion of whether the federal government has sufficient power to do so. Often, the discussion is phrased as whether “the government” has sufficient power. Others have asked if the federal government has the power to compel individuals to purchase health insurance.

My article (“Limits to Regulation due to the Interaction of the Patent and Commerce Clause”, in CATO Journal, Vol. 20, No. 3, Winter 2001, pages 401 – 423), gives an insight into both questions, by answering this one: why does the so-called “patent clause” of the federal constitution, not use the word “patent”?

If the word “patent” meant what we currently mean by that term, then the clause could have simply stated the relevant power by saying the federal government can issue patents. Instead, the “patent clause” carefully states that the Congress has the power to issue exclusive rights for a limited time to authors or inventors. It does not use the word “patent” at all.

As reviewed in that article, this use of words tells us a great deal about the purposes and structure of the federal constitution. Citing principal legal scholars of the day, the article shows that at the time the federal constitution was written, the word “patent” actually had a much broader meaning. It referred to any government grant of an economic right, called in the article a “general patent power”. Of course if the federal government can grant such rights without limit, we would not need to ask if the federal government has such power over health care.

Yet we ask. On the other hand, when the US states have created health care programs, or otherwise regulated matters like health insurance, the existence of that power in a state has been little questioned. And note: this common understanding is consistent with the 10th Amendment to the federal constitution, that powers not enumerated to the federal Congress are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.

So looking carefully at the choice of words in the “patent clause” tells us a great deal on what the federal government cannot do. The only general patent power granted by the federal constitution to the federal Congress is the specifically described power to create what we today call patents. All other aspects of the general patent power were not given to the federal government, so if exercised at all could be done only by states.

For example, the states can, and normally do, protect the general welfare by requiring holders of driver licenses (issue of which is a proper exercise of a general patent power by a state government) to also buy accident insurance. The federal government however does not regulate drivers or issue of driver licenses within the jurisdiction of any state.

Given this careful allocation of general patent powers, principally to the states, what then is the role if any of the federal government in matters of commerce? Since the word “patent” when the federal constitution was written refers to allocation of economic rights, and those powers generally were reserved to states (or the people), then the commerce language of the federal constitution cannot be interpreted as a general allocation of such power to the federal government. Had that been the intent, the simple grant to Congress of a power to issue patents, without any other words, would have been sufficient.

Now, the federal commerce clause (Article I, Section 8 of the federal constitution) says that Congress has the power: “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” But we just saw that Congress has no power to regulate commerce among the several States by the use of an exclusive federal grant of markets, or indeed to allocate those markets, because to do so in that form would be to exercise a power (the “general patent power”) not granted. Since the Congress has no power to allocate economic rights (except what today we call patents), therefore, the commerce language must have some other meaning.

But that meaning also is not a mystery. A review of other powers of the federal government in relation to states, shows that the role of the federal government is to prevent overly restrictive use of powers by the states. Thus, in commerce among the several states, (“interstate commerce”) the role of the federal government was not to allocate rights, but to prevent the states from unduly closing commerce when they exercise their own powers to allocate rights.

This fact is consistent with the historical problem of the day, when states had often done exactly that, to the detriment of the general welfare of all. The “general welfare” words of the federal constitution in no sense changes this separation of powers. The federal government protects the general welfare by preventing excesses of exercise of power by the states.

The details of those arguments are laid out in the referenced article. The application to the health care debate seems straight forward: the states can require health insurance or not, as each may choose; the states could create state supported systems of health care for their citizens, if they choose. The federal government can do neither.

What the federal government might do is this: if in the exercise of their rights to regulate health insurance or provide it, the states create rules that obstruct commerce in health care, then the Congress can prevent such obstruction. It is not simply ironic that the one thing the Congress might be able to constitutionally do with regard to health care, to remove obstruction to competitive access, is not among those included in the proposed legislation.

Paul A. Ballonoff operates Ballonoff Network in Alexandria, VA.

Copyright © 2009, Paul A. Ballonoff

A recent article in the New York Times covered the growth of state-level resistance to a future national health care plan. For example, in 2010, voters in Arizona will have a chance to approve a state constitutional amendment that would effectively ban national health care in that state. Legislators in Florida and Michigan have already introduced similar legislation, and potentially, 15 other states will do so in the 2010 legislative session.

But here’s something fundamentally important that NYT writer Monica Davey claims in her article:

…the Constitution’s supremacy clause ordinarily allows federal law to, in essence, trump a state law that conflicts with it…

A best, this is a highly-misleading statement.

There are two main points to make here:

1. The “supremacy clause” does not allow federal law to trump state law in all situations, or even “ordinarily” as Davey claims. It only does so when both laws are in pursuance of a power that has been delegated to the federal government by “We the People.” – in the Constitution.

2. We know that this is the case because Monica’s version of the supremacy clause was actually proposed by leading founders – and rejected. When the Constitution was being drafted, James Madison and others proposed what came to be known as the “Virginia Plan.” A major part of this plan was to give the congress a veto over state laws. It was defeated. That means, in plain English, the founders considered this idea, and said no. And Davey is irrefutably wrong in her claim.

So we know from this short lesson that the supremacy clause did not authorize the power that Davey is claiming. In reality, things are pretty much the other way around. The biggest Constitutional problems that actually exist in this country are those times when the federal government exercises powers not delegated to it by “We the People.” And that happens far more often than not.

Unfortunately, though, not enough people know this important history of the Virginia Plan, and this basic premise of the Constitution, so they’re easily swayed by patently false statements by people like Davey and the New York Times.

by Josh Eboch

Anyone who desires a constitutionally limited federal government should remember and celebrate that its limitations would necessarily cut both ways. Because if federal policy actually adhered to the letter of the Constitution, no single ideological camp could wield sufficient power to impose a set of beliefs on the entire country.

Which was exactly the point of our federalist system, and of the 10th Amendment. Beyond specific, enumerated federal powers, an infinite number of issues were intentionally left to the authority of the people through their state governments. And it is to the states that liberals, conservatives, and even libertarians must address all questions extending beyond the constitutional purview of federal authority.

Click Here to Read the Full Article

After gambling his young presidency on an ambitious domestic agenda, Barack Obama’s political insecurity and ideological arrogance now demand passage of a health care “reform” bill that will vastly increase the federal government’s role in the lives of American citizens. This could be accomplished in a number of ways, from a Trojan Horse compromise to the so-called “nuclear option” of budgetary reconciliation. But make no mistake, it will be accomplished; despite the vocal protestations of voters across the country.

Look carefully though. Deaf to budget warnings and terrified of a minor legislative loss, the Obama administration and its statist allies in Congress may inadvertently be committing a much larger strategic error.

Their miscalculation stems from a failure to recognize the true nature of President Obama’s electoral mandate last fall. Certainly plenty of Americans share his leftist world view, but many more Obama voters, especially the independents who have since abandoned him in droves, voted for his fiscally conservative platform of efficient government, lower taxes, and more transparency. With each passing day, it becomes increasingly obvious that is not the change they got.

Instead, the eloquent centrist Americans thought they elected has been replaced by a haughty cuadillo who demands that we all shut up and get on board with his various social engineering schemes. And always, despite the abysmal economic track record of government, his plans call for more federal control over private industry, including our single-most important industry: Health care.

However, ripping a page from the Bush playbook of condescension and demagoguery is not the way for Obama to gain trust the trust he needs. Heavy handed federal policy turns voters off even in the best of times, and these are clearly not the best of times.

Outrage over decades of bipartisan waste, fraud, and corruption has been on display for the last six months, and widespread fear over the federal government’s motives has driven millions of previously apathetic citizens to vocal and vehement political activism for the very first time.

But the president still doesn’t get it. Obama expects us to continue watching quietly from the sidelines while he arrogates enormous power to himself, tramples constitutional freedom, and then waits to be lionized by history. After all, that strategy has worked for virtually every president since Lincoln.

It won’t work this time. If and when President Obama forces through his health care bill, it could trigger a backlash already simmering at the state level that neither he nor his colleagues in Congress seem to have seriously contemplated: A popular push for state level nullification.

These days, nullification is an obsolete and misunderstood term, ostensibly discredited as a viable policy option more than a century ago by four years of bloody Civil War.

But for desperate people whose freedoms are being systematically usurped by all three federal branches and both political parties, nullification may be the key to restoring our republic.

Already, state legislators from Arizona to Florida to Georgia have proposed measures to nullify unconstitutional aspects of any federal health care law. Which, in all likelihood, would mean pretty much the entirety of H.R. 3200. But even more intriguing is the precedent a nullification fight would set and the confidence it would build for those in the liberty movement.

For years Americans have watched helplessly while the Supreme Court sat as binding arbiter in constitutional disagreements, essentially permitting the federal government to dictate the limits of its own power. And, predictably, the limits on that power have been few.

But once citizens understand that they can circumvent a power-hungry Congress and its enablers on the court by demanding their state governments step up and nullify unconstitutional laws, entrenched abuses of every sort could come crashing down.

Admittedly, that future is still a long way off, and reaching it will require a sustained effort and focus by small government activists heretofore unseen. But more of those activists are finding their voices every day, and no matter what happens in the coming weeks with regard to health care, recent events suggest a major power decentralization may already be underway.

Josh is a freelance writer and journalist originally from the Washington D.C. area. He is a cynically optimistic and unrepentant news junkie. His work has been published locally and in Charleston, SC. Email Josh.

In response to what some opponents see as a Congress that doesn’t represent their interests, State Legislators are looking to the nearly forgotten American political tradition of nullification as a way to reject any potential national health care program that may be coming from Washington.

Many opponents of national health care say that it’s unconstitutional, and that the 10th Amendment reserves such power to the States, or the People themselves.

In 2010, residents of Arizona will be voting on a State Constitutional Amendment that would let them effectively opt out of any proposed national health care plan.  And in July, a similar proposal was introduced in Florida.

Today, a group of Georgia State Senators announced a plan to introduce a State Constitutional Amendment “Giving Georgians the right to choose whether they want to enroll in any health insurance plan and prohibiting governments from punishing those who decide not to participate.”

Sources close to the Tenth Amendment Center say that more than ten other states may see such proposals introduced in the coming legislative session.

Nullification?

When a state ‘nullifies’ a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or ‘non-effective,’ within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned.

Recent nullification efforts have seen success.  In early 2007, Maine and then Utah passed resolutions refusing to implement the Bush-era Real ID act on grounds that the law was unconstitutional.  Well over a dozen other states followed suit in passing legislation opposing Real ID.   And, thirteen states now have medical marijuana laws that are in direct opposition to federal laws, which consider the plant illegal in virtually all circumstances.

Recognizing the potentially overwhelming task of enforcing a law in the face of such broad resistance, the Obama administration recently announced that it would not only stop federal marijuana raids in those 13 states, but also, that it was looking to “repeal and replace” Real ID.

Some consider this to be a blueprint to resist various federal laws that they see as outside the scope of the Constitution.  Some say that each successful state-level resistance to federal programs will only embolden others to try the same – resulting in an eventual shift of power from the federal government to the States and the People themselves.

Let the People Decide

George Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, in an interview with the Atlanta Business Chronicle said, “Proposals to deny or limit access to the purchase of private health care are simply unacceptable. Our basic freedoms are at risk with the government-run health care proposals coming out of Washington.”

Supporters say that the best way to deal with important issues like health care coverage is on a state level, and that the voice of the people in each state should be heard.  In November, 2010, Georgia voters may get that chance.

Copyright © 2009 by TenthAmendmentCenter.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

During the Bush administration, many within the dominant culture expressed concern about the constitutionality of detaining several hundred alleged enemy combatants in Guantanamo.

Whenever legal restrictions on abortion are proposed, many express doubt about the constitutionality of interjecting government between patients and their doctors.

But those voices have been mostly silent about the constitutionality of empowering the federal government with decisions over the life, death, and health of three hundred million Americans.

In fact, the constitutional difficulties are profound.  This is certainly so for those who believe the Constitution means what our Founders understood it to mean.  But it is even true for those interested only in modern Supreme Court jurisprudence.

Following are some of the ways in which current health care proposals potentially clash with our nation’s Basic Law:

Enumerated powers. The Constitution grants the federal government about thirty-five specific powers – eighteen in Article I, Section 8, and the rest scattered throughout the document.  (The exact number depends on how you count.)  None of those powers seems to authorize control of the health care system outside the District of Columbia and the federal territories.

To be sure, since the late 1930s, the Supreme Court has been tolerant of the federal welfare state, usually justifying federal ad hoc programs under specious interpretations of the congressional Commerce Power.  But, except in wartime, the Court has never authorized an expansion of the federal scope quite as large as what is being proposed now.  And in recent years, both the Court and individual justices – even “liberal” justices – have said repeatedly that there are boundaries beyond which Congress may not go.

The greatest Chief Justice, John Marshall, once wrote that if Congress were to use its legitimate powers as a “pretext” for assuming an unauthorized power, “it would become the painful duty” of the Court “to say that such an act was not the law of the land.”

But health care bills such as the Obama-favored HB 3200 do not even offer a pretext.  The only reference to the Constitution in HB 3200 is a severability clause that purports to save the remainder of the bill if part is declared unconstitutional.  HB 3200 contains no reference to the Commerce Power or to any other enumerated power.

Excessive Delegation. The Constitution “vests” legislative authority  in Congress.  Congress is not permitted to delegate that authority to the executive branch.  This is another realm in which the modern Supreme Court has been lenient, while affirming that there are limits.

Thus, in Schecter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935), a unanimous court struck down a delegation of authority that looked much like the delegations in some current health care proposals.

Substantive Due Process. The Substantive Due Process doctrine was not contemplated by the Founders, but the courts have engrafted onto constitutional jurisprudence.  The courts employ this doctrine to invalidate laws they think are unacceptably intrusive of personal liberty or privacy.

The most famous modern Substantive Due Process case is Roe v. Wade, which struck down state abortion laws that intruded into the doctor-patient relationship.  But the intrusion invalidated in Roe was insignificant compared to the massive intervention contemplated by schemes such as HB 3200.  “Global budgeting” and “single-payer” plans go even further, and seem clearly to violate the Supreme Court’s Substantive Due Process rules.

Tenth Amendment. Technically, the Tenth Amendment is merely a declaration that the federal government has no powers beyond those enumerated in the Constitution.  However, the modern Supreme Court has cited the Tenth Amendment in holding that Congress may not “commandeer” state decision making in the service of federal goals.

It is permissible for Congress to condition grants of funds to the states, if the conditions are related to the funding program and are not “coercive.”  Thus, in 1986 the Court ruled that Congress may, because of highway safety issues, reduce highway grants by five percent to states refusing to raise their drinking ages to 21.

But the mandates that some health care plans would impose on states certainly could be found “coercive,” both because they are excessive (HB 3200, for instance, would withdraw all Public Health Service Act money from non-cooperating states) and because they are unrelated to the program.

A major goal of our Constitution and Bill of Rights is to limit government power, especially federal power.  National health care proposals would increase that power greatly, so it is not surprising that those proposals have constitutional difficulties.

Whatever the merits of federal control of health care, moving in that direction is (as former Justice David Souter might say) a change of “constitutional dimension.”  The proper way to make such a change is not through an ordinary congressional bill.  The proper way is by constitutional amendment.

Rob Natelson is Professor of Law at The University of Montana, and a leading constitutional scholar.  (See www.umt.edu/law/faculty/natelson.htm.) His opinions are his own, and should not be attributed to any other person or institution.

You would think it wouldn’t be too much to ask for the people who serve in government or who presume to influence our public policy to have a clue about what the Constitution means.

On that subject, the Washington Post syndicate is featuring a column by “progressive” Paul Begala, once a Clinton health care advisor and now a part-time professor at Georgetown. 

The gist of the column is that if it isn’t politically possible for the feds to completely take over health care now, they should at least grab as much of it as they can.

On the Constitution, Begala writes:

“The Founders gave us a standard: ‘a more perfect Union’  It’s an odd phrase; we don’t generally speak of something becoming ‘more perfect.’  I believe it means that we have a duty, every generation, to make progress.”

Rubbish.

As students of the Constitution know,  in eighteenth-century English, the word “perfect” usually meant “complete.”  The Framers were stating in the Constitution’s Preamble that the new union was to be more complete than the union had been under the Articles of Confederation.

Free government requires that policy makers understand the basic law under which they operate.

Begala’s column is but one example of a disturbing tendency among policy-makers and intellectuals to dodge the work it takes to understand our basic law, and speculate instead.

Rob Natelson is Professor of Law at The University of Montana, and a leading constitutional scholar.  (See www.umt.edu/law/faculty/natelson.htm.) His opinions are his own, and should not be attributed to any other person or institution.