On the recordMarch 15, 2011
next Wednesday marks the first anniversary of the day President Obama signed the bill into law that, in my opinion and in the opinion of most Americans, is the greatest involvement in our Nation's health care system in history. What we see, as that law is discussed, as it is challenged in court, is a bill that was signed into law that was full of problems when it was signed into law. It was a bill full of constitutional questions, and, in fact, while some courts have said it may be constitutional, others have said it is not. It was a bill where the courts say the Federal Government cannot make you buy a commercially available product, then the same people who were saying a year ago that this requirement is not a tax are saying: Maybe it is a tax. Maybe the Constitution allows us to define that particular purpose as a tax on the American people. But a year ago, they were saying: This is not a tax at all. This is definitely not a tax. There is no way this could ever be interpreted as a tax. But when courts say you cannot do this the way this bill does it, suddenly they try to reinvent what the law was designed to do. One of the reasons this bill has so many of these problems is there was a rush to get a bill into law, a bill with more government control of health care into law, a bill that could not have passed the Senate the day the President signed it into law.
