The future of Obamacare
The individual mandate requring citizens to purchase something was challenged from the beginning in state and appellate courts, and opening argument were just heard before the US Supreme Court. The HHS mandate requiring citizens to purchase something that violates their conscience is being challenged in a first round of lawsuits with more joining by the week.
One of the new games in town during last week’s Supreme Court hearing of arguments on Obamacare has been handicapping the justices likely ruling on this case, when one comes.
But ‘the best defense is a good offense’ strategy returns as the president takes a shot at the Supreme Court, actually using the term “judicial activism” as a warning.
And President Obama is pressing the ‘activist court’ charge.
“Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said at a Rose Garden news conference.
The majority he referenced was not quite that strong; Congress approved the law two years ago in hard-fought party-line votes after a divisive national debate. Republican presidential contenders say they will make sure it is repealed if the Supreme Court doesn’t throw it out first.
For a president to weigh in so forcefully about a case currently under deliberation by the Supreme Court is unusual, and it speaks to the stakes at hand.
He did, after all, write the book about audacity.
