27 Jun 2012 Leading Liberals’ Attacks on Supreme Court in Advance of ObamaCare Decision are “Ignorant and Offensive,” Group Says

“It Must be ‘Celebrate Ignorance’ Day on the Left,” Says National Center for Public Policy Research Chairman Amy Ridenour

Washington, DC – The announcements by leading liberals in and out of Congress today that a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that strikes down any part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) is, ipso facto, a politicized decision, is drawing fire today from the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Numerous House Democrats, the House Democrats’ campaign committee and the AFL-CIO are quoted making outrageous allegations in a new article in The Hill. According to the Hill article, by Mike Lillis, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), vice-chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said at a press conference this morning, “We’ll find out this week if the Supreme Court is listening to the American people and following the U.S. Constitution, or if it’s becoming more and more what we’ve seen in the past: a partisan body no different from the Congress.”

“Becerra’s comments are ignorant and offensive,” said Amy Ridenour, chairman and joint CEO of the National Center for Public Policy Research and co-author of a 2009 book on health care, Shattered Lives: One Hundred Victims of Government Health Care. “I rarely talk like this, but Congressman Becerra is doubling-down on stupid. On the one hand, he attacks the Supreme Court for what he presumes will be a politicized decision, and on the other, he says the court should be ‘listening to the American people,’ which is what politicians are supposed to do. Which is it? Is the Congressman too obtuse to understand that if the Supreme Court were to ‘listen to the American people,’ as he put it, it would be acting like what he says he doesn’t want, ‘a partisan body no different from the Congress’?”

“And then there’s the fact that the American people don’t want ObamaCare, as many, many polls show,” Ridenour added, “which means that a severe misunderstanding about the popularity of ObamaCare lies underneath Becerra’s severe misunderstanding about the role of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The Hill also quotes Rep. John Larson (D-CT) saying it would be “illogical and blatantly political if the Supreme Court were to rule [against the law]… There’s no question that the commerce of health[care] crosses state boundary lines.”

“It must be ‘Celebrate Ignorance’ Day on the left,” said Ridenour, “because on most days, even liberals try not to look stupid in public. There are several key questions before the court, and none of them are whether commerce in health care ever, or even routinely, crosses state lines. Onlookers are left to wonder if these Congressional liberals still don’t understand the Constitutional questions involved, or if they are just pretending they don’t, so they can deliberately mislead the American people in a desperate attempt to save face.”

“House Democrats had plenty of warning that the ObamaCare legislation they were pushing had a huge Constitutional question mark smack-dab in the middle,” added Ridenour. “They shouldn’t have needed to be told, of course, because each and every one of them takes an oath of office that requires them to defend the Constitution, which, all sane people would agree, implies that they are pledging to have some familiarity with it. Reasonable people can disagree – barely – over the Constitutionality of the individual mandate, but no conscious member of the House has an excuse for not knowing the constitutionality of the individual mandate was at least an open question. ObamaCare could have been designed without an individual mandate, and it is unseemly for those who chose to take their chances with the Court by putting one in there to start whining now that the court is doing what it has to do, which is to resolve the question. Besides, the Court could vote to uphold the entire law. I personally believe it will overturn all of it, but if the entire law is upheld, I won’t say the Court is political, just that it is misguided.”

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka also spoke with the Congressmen at a press conference today, and, according to The Hill, criticized the court, saying, “What we have is several justices on the Supreme Court that, while they were being confirmed, talked about how they would be activist, [and instead] have become the most radical activist judges we’ve seen.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” said Ridenour, “but it is clear Trumka is still smarting from the court’s decision last week in Knox v. SEIU that a labor union cannot put a ‘special assessment’ on people who are not even union members without their permission, just so the union can carry out political activities. This was a 7-2 decision and a pretty obvious one at that. No one should be able to take other people’s money for political activities without their permission, and unions aren’t entitled to a special exception. Richard Trumka’s sense of entitlement must be immense.”

Amy Ridenour is the co-author, with Ryan Balis, of the 2009 book, Shattered Lives: One Hundred Victims of Government Health Care, and is the founding CEO of the National Center for Public Policy Research, established in 1982. A veteran conservative activist who has done hundreds of media interviews on health care reform and ObamaCare, she also served in 1993-94 as a joint co-chairman of a successful conservative movement-wide coalition to stop Hillary and Bill Clinton’s early version of ObamaCare.

The National Center for Public Policy Research is a conservative, free-market, non-profit think-tank established in 1982. It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters. In 2011 it received over 350,000 individual donations. Two percent of its revenue comes from corporate sources. Contributions to it are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.

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