Can Congress Make You Buy Broccoli?
Is it constitutional for Congress to make you buy broccoli for your own good, ask three professors of health law at Boston University in the New England Journal of Medicine for December 22nd. The ringing answer that they give to this question is “We don’t know.” They have decided to sit on the fence until others, in the shape of the Supreme Court, decide for them.
The Affordable Care Act enjoins millions of citizens to buy private health insurance. The authors say that it is difficult to decide whether refusal to buy such coverage counts as an activity that bears on interstate commerce.
The administration claims that it does. After all, failure to buy insurance has as many economic consequences as does buying it, perhaps even more consequences for third parties. But the problem with this argument is that it is totalitarian in its corollary. Every single decision to purchase or not to purchase something has economic consequences. Prudence in not living above one’s means, for example, lessens aggregate demand, at least for a time. Can you therefore be forced to take out a loan to buy something you don’t need in order (supposedly) that the economy should revive? This would give monstrous power to legislators, even if, as is impossible, they could be relied upon to use it wisely.
But, replies the administration, health care is different from ordinary products; at some time in his life, everyone will need and use it. For while you can live without a car or a television, you cannot live without health care, at least not your whole life through.
The Constitution is no longer a barrier to the usurpations and consolidations of power by the federal government. Nor is there any material power of opposition to marshal against it. The state governments have been made into its handmaidens by federal funds transfers such as “revenue sharing,” “aid to education,” “highway funding,” “block grants,” and so forth. Few states maintain even the fiction of a militia.
Many in the Right, aware that the federal structure has failed to protect Americans’ rights, have spoken passionately of torches and pitchforks. Where are they? If we’re serious about the preservation of our Constitutional basis and the freedom it’s supposed to safeguard, why hasn’t there been an armed march on Washington? Why haven’t several hundred thousand Americans toting hunting rifles and backpacks of field rations stormed up the Capitol steps and ringed the White House to demand an accounting?
Have we finally reached cold dead hand time?
The right wing respects the mechanisms of civil society. Indeed, we’re busy trying to keep the remnants of it functioning because we have families to support.
If and when it gets to the point where the economy has been hog-tied to the extent that there is no hope of our being able to support our families any more, then all bets are off.
Considering the fact that the Obama Administration is keeping the H-1b program in effect even though there is already a glut of unemployed American tech workers, and considering the fact that every new piece of bureaucratic regulation cripples the US economy even further and causes more jobs to be offshored, we may be getting close to that point.
This is my story. It is also the story of many others:
http://1389blog.com/2010/12/24/who-are-the-99ers/
Not yet. It is time to arm ourselves and prepare for war, but it is not yet time for violence. When the time comes for violence, there will be no doubt that it is time. For now, we must see if the election has accomplished anything.
Oh good grief
myth buster, where is your sensitivity. When the war dose start you will see the good side of humanity. That`s why I am buying ammunition and food now!
If you have to buy it, do you then have to eat it?
Could you put a lot of chocolate and sugar and fat on it and still be in compliance?
There is not enough chocolate,sugar or fat in the world. Just say no to broccoli! ( and brussels sprouts).
I used to think that the “pitchforks and torches” moment would come in my children’s time. I don’t think that any more. I think I’ll live to see it, at least the beginning of it.
The Constitution has been inverted in its meaning and intent and is now being used as a vehicle for those wishing to amass total power over society. Madison would not recognize the nation he midwifed.
“but it is not yet time for violence”
Violence put these people in power. Need I list all the left-wing violence of the 1960s? 70s? 80s?… 00s?
From the guns of Columbia to the Zebra Killings; from the assassination of one Kennedy by a Communist to the the assassination of another by a Palestinian; from Sterling Hall to Center for Urban Horticulture; etc. Violence works because it intimidates. The right reveres laws and respects judges, even insane ones that take over school systems, take over prison systems, or reverse elections. The left ignores law, corrupts courts, and murders at will.
One of the most violent, in theory and action, is an advisor and friend of the president. Other presidential advisors are Communists (van Jones) or admire Communism (Maoist ornaments).
Everyone is just waiting to see if the government backs down. We have the court challenges to Obamacare. We have the House to defund it. Obama has shown that he will use the regulatory agencies to end run the law as he has done with the FCC and EPA. That will get worse and we may have the opportunity to impeach his arrogant ass yet.
But a wall has been breached. Our neighbors have tried to rob us and our government has displayed a contempt for the people, law and Constitution never before seen in this country all while the media does not make a peep. The government even went so far as to support a leftist coup in Honduras just so Obama could show Chavez his bonafides. The government has lost its legitimacy and it has lost the consent of the governed. The country is already in a civil war by other means.
But restoring the Republic may yet be a bloody business. We just choose to put that part of the struggle off as far as possible while warning everyone that the day is fast approaching so that they know what is at stake. Not much more to do at the moment.
That is why the lawsuits challenging Obamacare are so important right now. If the government can force you to buy a product, any product, then it can force you to buy anything. What happens if the Federal Government then forces you to only buy cars from Governemnt Motors, or GM? It can place enormous taxes on other cars, forcing you to buy cars made by GM. Why can’t the Federal Government force you then into eating only certain foods? It can place enormous taxes on any meats or meat products, forcing you to only buy vegetables. And what do you think that will do to the meat industry? Pretty soon we’ll be like North Korea, where that government forces its people to eat grass. And what if the Federal Government then decides that, well, you only need your house heated up to 60 degrees in the wintertime and can only cool it after the temperature reaches 95 degrees in the summertime?
Another government tried all of this, and eventually failed. It was the Soviet Union. Obama MUST be stopped. He is trying to avoid Congress by regulating whatever he wants through Federal agencies. This is not a republic anymore, it is turning into a dictatorship. The next Congress must decide if it still makes the laws, or if it’s the president who calls the shots. Stick with what the Constitution says. It has served us well for many years. No need to turn our backs on it now.
As an Australian and a supporter of America, you guys are starting to seriously worry me.
How is it that you can allow the travesty of the TSA searches? We here don’t even presume to have your political freedoms – we are a constitutional monarchy after all – but, we would never ever put up with this.
Heads would roll!
Why are you, our cousins, allowing this to happen to you?
James, Melbourne, OZ
Because far too many have forgotten… or perhaps never learned… the wise words of Ben Franklin:
It’s as simple as that.
Some of us have stopped using the airlines entirely.
The Obama Administration has already stopped farmers from growing broccoli in the CA Central Valley. Maybe they plan to import broccoli from China too.
how will the chinese get lead into broccoli ??
Yep – in order to save some type of inedible bait fish that supposedly might be endangered unless the Central Valley’s irrigation water is dumped uselessly into the ocean.
It’s Obozo’s way of destroying every sector of the economy that still has any viability left, while at the same time, punishing and starving out rural voters who will never vote for Obama anyway.
Health care and health insurance are not the same thing. Those of us on the right should be hammering this point every time someone on the left intentionally or unintentionally conflates the two.
The best comment of all! Thanks. The government’s argument conflating the two is is an absolute outrage to the intelligence of the courts and the citizens. Hopefully more judges will agree and slap down the DOJ lawyers for insulting their intelligence.
Congress can and WILL dictate what it wants ‘We The People’ to eat, drink, earn, and spend. And how long our lives will last.
There’s a czar for everything, now. And apparently, they are beyond reproach of any court in America.
Putin is so jealous.
Going with your theme, Cybergeezer, shouldn’t we all start calling those ‘czars’ by their more proper Soviet name – commisars?
Sounds good to me; But, going with what’s out in the media now, gives a term stronger ‘legs’.
I think commi-czars is good, too.
WE vote and there is a shortage of pitchforks. We will start revising the true tale of RobinHood these freaks have distorted. The Democrats are robbing those who earned to give to those who do not work. That is the role of the Sheriff of Nottingham. They not only have role confusion but terminal rectalcrainal inversion.
The congress’s and the Presidents logic is astounding in it’s sheer lunacy, hyperbole and lies. They have forced many Americans to buy more rifles and ammunition.
This is the inevitable result of the “war on drugs” once you empower a police state to protect people from their own bad habits you loose control of it. Anyone who can not see that the only things gained have been huge increases in federal power, huge increases in violence across the border, huge increases in prison populations (more people who will not ever be allowed to contribute to society), more money into the coffers of the DNC via the trial lawyers, and more audacity on the part of federal bureaucrats to dictate what you do with your own body.
Social cons sowed this whirlwind, live with it, end it, or hold your breath. But never say the Libertarians didn’t warn you.
The word “war” in any federal program is code for “unconstitutional”. It started with Lincoln suspending parts of the constitutions for the War of Secession. Then we had WWII and wholesale suspension of the constitution, including putting long standing law abiding citizens in concentration camps, just like the enemy we were fighting. But at least those were actually real *wars* that would presumably end eventually and things could get back to normal (and the US concentration camp victims were eventually released).
But then we had the “War on Poverty”, where the word “war” justified the unconstitutional federal welfare state.
Then the “War on Drugs” where your property can be seized with zero evidence if an officer “suspects” you of drug dealing (forfeiture), and if you manage to prove your innocence at your own expense, you can only get the “cash value” (whatever they auctioned it off for) back less a 10% “administration fee” (i.e., in most cases why bother). Note that one of every 4 US bills has significant traces of cocaine from being handled by a real drug dealer at some point. If an officer wants your car, he just has the drug sniffing dog sniff your wallet. (Thanks Carter, I think.)
Then the “War on Child Pornography”, where if someone steals your credit card number (maybe because a store like Marshall’s used WEP wireless to transmit it) and buys child porn (from some place in Thailand where child prostitution is big business) while you are in California, then you get arrested and permanently listed as a sex offender despite zero evidence. (Thanks Bush and Ashcroft.)
Then the “War on Terror”, where you can be held without specific charges or notification of relatives for up to 6 months on suspicion of planning to commit terror (Bush again).
The scary thing is that now they don’t even bother to use the word “war” to justify the wholesale federal takeover of banks, car manufacturers, and who knows what else. We are doomed.
Can you please not call the WWII internment camps “concentration camps”.
They were not!
Unless you have proof there was forced slave labour, medical experiments on prisoners, summary executions and the wholesale mass murder of ‘undesirables” happening in those camps.
You demean the memory of those who perished and those who survived the real concentration camps in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and many other places.
Don’t reconstruct language and history to fit your political point of view.
Not everything is relative.
I won’t take back the word “concentration”. However, I do apologize for the phrase “just like the enemy”. Obviously, I would much rather be in a US concentration camp than in a German or Japanese one. We made an honest effort to treat our prisoners well – even the ones that were actually the enemy. US forces were welcomed as liberators, unlike some other allied forces, because they didn’t take advantage of the prisoners before liberating them. But the camps were still unconstitutional – though perhaps justified by the real war in progress.
It was not just like the enemy. If by enemy you are referring to Germany. They created concentration camps for the purpose of destroying a race of people who they felt were inferior. We detained people (however unjustly) because we thought they were a threat to our country in a time of war. The detainment camps were wrong and stupid but they were not the same as what our enemy did. One was for the express purpose of genocide ours were not.
May be some good scholars who studied the US Constitution can answer my sincere question: who gave the federal government the power to tax whiskey in 1791? Was that the first time that the federal government circumvented the Constitution? It seems to me that the principle of equality under the law was violated then. Why should one tax one product and not other? Am I right in thinking that we started straying from the original intent that early in the life of the Republic? Isn’t it the natural consequence of those early exceptions that we are now ordered to do what no one in his sound mind would do under ordinary circumstances?
An excellent point. This was likely the first (maybe second) time the federal government acted unconstitutionally. The first may have been the assumption of individual state debts by the federal government (which led to the whiskey rebellion).
People all over the political spectrum routinely excuse unconstitutional behavior if it leads to the ends they desire.
Add the existence of the Federal Reserve to the list.
I’m not a constitutional scholar, but Section 8 says this:
“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
That seems to allow the taxation of whiskey, provided it is uniformly applied throughout the country.
Separate issue: this clause appears to permit income taxation, but the “uniform throughout” clause must have prevented variation by individuals rather than by states. The 16th amendment removed the restriction, which permits individual income taxes.
Thank you JustAl and ProReason. I don’t want to stray from the theme of the article. I just wanted to ask if that particular tax was not the beginning of an unequal system of taxation that got increasingly out of control. I think (being not a Constitutional expert by any stretch of the imagination) that taxing one item out of many was a bad start. Equality under the law should have prevailed and perhaps a smaller tax should have been applied to all products.
to begin with asking a lawyer a question isn’t a productive thing.
lawyers spend all their time and education learning how to circumvent the law not uphold it.
they are often a morally bankrupt bunch. a lawyer once told me i will advise you of the law the morality is your problem.
and congress cannot legally force you to eat broccoli. the may pass such a law but it would be unconstitutional and illegal. (not that that matters with the clowns in the present government)
all they can do legally is control it’s interstate transport.
If you have not determined some act of Civil Disobedience by now, may I suggest you read Walden Pond and Leaves of Grass to get some ideas from the Transcedentalists. Our ancestors had a much more difficult time with a lot less money at hand.Still they out maneuvered the dull wits of the likes of the POTUS dictator and Mrs PotBelly (culinary suggestions).
I live in an apartment and won’t be buying a pitchfork any time soon.
These dullards in the WH do not like me and I do not like them. No love lost.
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The worst part is that the ostensible goal of healthier populace is *not* furthered. For instance, broccoli and cabbage cause me (any many others with the same missing gene) to “bloat” (polite term for fart prodigiously), which is both unhealthy and causes social isolation – also unhealthy (even though I love broccoli and risk small amounts occasionally). Instead, I eat lots of kale and spinach. Kale is unlikely to be on their busybody menu, but blends well in green smoothies and makes a good salad when diced and kneaded with oil (kale is tough without preprocessing).
The problem happens with the incandescent light ban. There are many power saving applications that *require* incandescent bulbs (motions sensors to turn on when needed for instance burn out CF bulbs which can’t handle frequent power cycles).
Why let them frame it as a legal issue? It obviously is not. If it were, then everything is a legal issue, and we can’t take a breath without a lawyer.
It’s a power issue. Period. And Obamacare is where the rubber hits the road.
I’m betting on 200 million firearms in private hands. If you had to pick the most important single gift the Founding Fathers left the country, the second amendment is it.
Here Hear!
1 and 2 are key.
Everyone has the right to be annoyed.
And we all have the right to defend ourselves against tyranny.
“Can Congress Make You Buy Broccoli”
Are you serious? Are you serious?
LMAO!
If they can make you buy abortions, buy NPR, and buy the UN, then they can make you buy anything.
I think mandatory sodomy is already in the works…
Wait until the Feds decide that having abortions is in one’s best interest.
Subjects or citizens?
Tough choice if you are liberal who just naturally knows EVERYTHING about how everyone else should be living.
I think we won’t get to the point of an armed revolution until Congressmen Frank (D. MA) tries to force to eat what he likes to eat.
Has anyone noticed the serious fundamental difference between buying health INSURANCE and buying health CARE? You can still go to a doctor, or a clinic, or an imaging center or whatnot, and pay full retail.
Not to blame the author of the article, it’s a subject the gov’t is eager for everyone to forget, because if you remember that fact it makes the desperate totalitarian stretch commerce clause argument even more questionable.
soon as obamacare is implemented they will close those walk-in clinics if they aren’t toeing the marxist line
You won’t be able to pay cash for a doctor.
That would be unfair, and it would undermine the system.
Except, of course, the commissars, and their designated favorites, will be exempted. The commissars need to be in good health for the arduous task of ruling over us.
So; You’ve never had the opportunity to take advantage of a ‘black market’. Well, I have. And they work amazingly well. In fact, there’s one flourishing in Florida well enough to be very politically potent. It sorta works on MONEY.
agreed.
Black Markets are the inevitable consequence of government health care, and any other free market manipulation that governments come up with. The evidence is overwhelming. Unfortunately, black markets don’t provide the level of access that free markets provide.
And what ‘black market’ did you partake in? The one I had the experience with had plenty of access for all goods and services.
Interesting. Have you heard the Saudi’s have figured out that camel urine can destroy cancer cells? Yep, according to their petro dollars, it can.
Next step for Saudi camel urine? Well, their petro dollars will likely find that is even cures cancer. Then of course all well funded organizations, like was done to our universities, will hail the new miracle cure and advise men the must drink a glass of camel piss each day.
Following that, no doubt any man who does not take his daily ‘tonic’ as prescribed by the Prophet, will have his head chopped off.
Are the looney left trying to ease their agenda by way of broccoli? Are we going to allow any government to tell us what we can eat and drink? I personally think it would be a very big mistake.
Let’s ask the politicians for their degree in nutrition. Otherwise they should stick to the jobs they were elected for.
“Can you therefore be forced to take out a loan to buy something you don’t need in order (supposedly) that the economy should revive?”
Gee, isn’t that just like being having $2T borrowed in our name from the Chinese to splurge on government excess — that is pledged to be repaid from future taxes exacted from the people?
Broccoli *is* bad for people with gout. It increases their uric acid levels and can ultimately cause harm to their kidneys. So… broccoli is bad for some people.
Naturally, the government would ignore this and make those with gout buy broccoli anyway.
I have relatives with gout – it appears to run in some families.
In case anyone missed what I was hinting at before:
ObamaCare appears to be unconstitutional on its face.
But even if you accept the governments commerce clause argument at face value, even that argument falls apart when you realize that it is not necessary to purchase health INSURANCE in order to purchase health CARE.
The Constitution is no longer a barrier to the usurpations and consolidations of power by the federal government.
Hasnt been since 1861. This is the 150th Anniversary of that time in which Americans were shown once and for all that the Constitution didnt mean diddly squat. Immigrant soldiers conscripted and paid for by the Military Finance-Industrial Complex…who raped the Treasury…put the smack down on uppity citizens who believed themselves to be free men with the right to self government and to throw off tyranny.
I recall an incident with the first Bush (41) administration. It seems that word leaked out concerning the President’s food preferences. Apparently he didn’t like Broccoli. Quoting: “I do not like broccoli and I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.”
Are we really facing a dilemma where even the President of the United States can not say no to broccoli?
Can Congress Make You Buy Broccoli?
They better not try. Such outrageous behavior might get me to consider buying a gun and joining a militia![end sarcasm]
Is the mandatory sodomy free? If I have to pay can I have beer instead? If anything should be mandatory is should be arsenic for congress, salt for Bloomberg, a fatter ass for Michelle Obama, and integrity for the DOJ.
Jimmy tried peanuts. Did it work?
Can Congress make you buy broccoli?
I have a better question:
If Congress’ authority to regulate commerce can force you to buy something against your will, then can Congress also force you to work on a cotton plantation against your will?
What a waist the Civil War was.
Elana Kagan could not answer the question whether or not is is constitutional if the congress can make you eat broccoli during her confirmation hearings. Yet, she was confirmed. Our politicians our what is wrong with the country.
I will note that obesity, especially in minority communities, has only exploded in the last 20 years–IMHO because the government feeding programs have also exploded during that time. If food is free, we will eat too much of it. Now they are going to fix what they caused?
The top-down, one-size-fits-all approach to health-care is desirable but hardly pratical, to the point of being impossible to implement due to the fact we’re all different. Citizen A. exercises, eats rights, drives sensibly, does not engage in high-risk activities and practices his faith. Citizen B. eats at McDonalds a couple of times a day, doesn’t exercise, smokes, drinks, drives like an idiot, thinks that risking his body is his business. Extrapolate forward from this and the result is predictable. In the final analysis, health-care costs are sky-rocketing,thanks to all the B.s in the world, aided and abetted by congress that abbrogated it’s duty to preserve the rights of the individual.
Health-care means just that,take care of your health.
Leave me alone! I can take care of myself thank you without government intervention.
The thing they will ultimately mandate we buy is union labor. They already do it by other means (GM) but basically it is all about creating constituent groups who benefit from robbing other constituent groups. It all cancels out in the end of course since a system based on robbery just creates bad incentives and inefficiencies and graft but that is the whole point. Politicians always try to game the system to where the only way to succeed is through them. Global Warming and the push to make the best health care system in the world look more like the worst are just the latest means of trying to achieve the same old aims.
The fundamental fallacy in these discussions goes right to the usurpation of power based on whether this or that economic action or inaction “bears on interstate commerce.” That is not the question. The question is whether it is interstate, foreign, or Indian tribe commerce and regulation thereof. Giving the full extent of what Congress can regulate strips the fallacy bare.
IF we accept the fallacious “bears on commerce” as meaning the same thing as IS commerce, then we can be required to buy or sell any given item to foreign importers and exporters, and with Indians. We can be forced to buy cigarettes from Indians, and to gamble at Indian casinos—after all, not doing so sure “bears on” commerce with the Indian tribes in exactly the same way as not buying insurance or growing wheat for one’s own use bears on interstate commerce.
But no one has ever believed that the regulation of foreign or Indian tribe commerce means that Congress can require Americans to sell or buy anything. Regulation of commerce, constitutionally, is not dictation of purchases, setting of prices, or any other interference with purchasers’ and sellers’ transactions or production; it is setting the global terms of commerce.
When told that the Constitution gives Congress the power to dictate purchase of anything, the appropriate first response is “Where?” There is no answer. It is not even “maybe” true that the Constitution meant any such thing as dictating purchases by the regulation of commerce between the states, foreign nations, and the Indian tribes. There simply is no power to dictate purchases.
There is nothing anywhere in the Constitution permitting or authorizing the federal government to command individuals, or citizens, or the people, to positively do ANYTHING. Not one single order. Not one single mandate, requirement, or command to the people. To propose that the commerce clause is actually just such a mandate is blatantly false, and not even a “maybe” in argument. It simply is not, in any way, in any interpretation, in any sense, in any possibility, in the Constitution. The Constitution established a government that is for the people, not to the people.
It’s amazing that the left is pleading for cooperation while lying on their backs after being whipped in November. The talk is now reaching across the aisles,(I’ve heard this before)to get the economy going,(I’ve heard this before)But I remember it a little differently when the doors were locked to the right and bribes were as common as water. 122,000 jobs were claimed (firemen, police, teachers) all government jobs. The GOP fell for this BS before lets see if they learned their lesson. There’s another election next year if you didn’t. The GOP better get some back bone and grow some nads or the left will leave you crying in your beer again and America will be furious and will vote you out again.
The bottom line here is IF congress can force US citizens to buy health insurance, then there are NO limits on what they can do. The commerce clause can be justified to do anything and everything. Then we will no longer be free people, but property of the State. I just hope SCOTUS agrees and finds in favor of Freedom.
Every doctor knows of, and has been frustrated by, patients who have refused life-saving treatment.
Au contraire, my fine Mr. Dalrymple. I know docs who couldn’t care less if some patients refuse life-saving treatment. And who’s to say it’s really life-saving? Something could go wrong – an infection, a missed diagnosis, an instrument left inside someone after surgery – any number of things. If the treatment really is life-saving and refused, that’s one less patient the doctor has to treat, and another will line up to take his/her place. Cynical? Yes, but also true.
It gets even better: Congress or Obama’s Czar of medical practice, can require American citizens to remove organ transplants, or limb replacements, brought into the U.S. from other countries, because they have not been approved for use in America by these ‘Agencies’. They can literally tear your heart out, if they want.
Congress can make you buy brocolli. The power to make you eat it is reserved to the states, or to your mother.
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Let them eat arugula!