No mandate For Dead Babies
by digby
I’ve heard of the movement to grant fetuses full individual rights from the moment of conception and I’m familiar with the view that the health care mandate to buy insurance is unconstitutional. But I hadn’t heard about the requirement that forces babies to buy their own health insurance.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), master of the pithy C-SPAN clip, made an original argument today for why health care reform is unconstitutional during an emergency House rules meeting about the GOP’s upcoming vote to repeal it.
After Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) said that health insurance counts as interstate commerce and therefore falls under the Congress’s constitutional powers, King argued that there are people who never even use health care — and therefore a law requiring them to buy insurance is unconstitutional.
“There have always been and likely will always be, babies that were born, lived and died within the jurisdictions of the individual states,” he said, “who never cross a state line, access no health care and therefore do not impact interstate commerce. Therefore, to compel someone who fits that category to buy an insurance policy” does not fit under the interstate commerce clause.
“You find the baby that was not born in a hospital or with a midwife, who did not receive inoculations,” Polis said. “You find that baby and identify them and I’ll be happy to have that discussion.”
“I hate to tell you but they show up in garbage cans around this country, sir,” he said.
You have to appreciate someone who can use a dead baby in a garbage can as a reason why the government can’t require that everyone have health insurance. That takes some real imagination.
Who says this congress isn’t going to be the freak show of the Dan Burton years?
Update: I mean, come on:
Two House Republicans have cast votes as members of the 112th Congress, but were not sworn in on Wednesday, a violation of the Constitution on the same day that the GOP had the document read from the podium.
The Republicans, incumbent Pete Sessions of Texas and freshman Mike Fitzpatrick, missed the swearing in because they were at a fundraiser in the Capitol Visitors Center.