Barrett won't say if Medicare and Social Security are Constitutional
14 Oct '20 22:20Actual fact:
"Feinstein then proceeded to read from a brief 2015 essay by Michael Rappaport, a conservative legal scholar at the University of San Diego. Titled “The Unconstitutionality of Social Security and Medicare,” the paper argues that “these programs would have never taken their pernicious form if the Constitution’s original meaning had been followed in the first place.”
Barrett is, like Rappaport, a constitutional originalist. An originalist philosophy would be consistent with Rappaport’s conclusion that popular though they may be, New Deal and Great Society social programs — often called “entitlements” because qualified recipients are “entitled” to them by law — represent an illegitimate expansion of the administrative state.
Conservative icon Ronald Reagan got his start in politics by recording a now famous speech against Medicare when Democrats proposed it in 1961. He called it “socialized medicine,” the same phrase Republicans would use to attack the Affordable Care Act 50 years later.
Shrinking the “welfare state” has been the project of many Republicans in Congress, who almost uniformly support Barrett’s nomination to the high court. In 2017, Barrett criticized Chief Justice John Roberts — himself a judicial conservative appointed by a Republican president — because, she wrote, he “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”
With that view plainly in mind, Feinstein asked Barrett if she agreed with “originalists who say that the Medicare program is unconstitutional.”
Barrett said she was “not familiar” with Rappaport’s article. Pressed by Feinstein for an opinion on the broader point about Medicare’s legitimacy, Barrett said she could not “answer that question in the abstract,” citing the so-called Ginsburg rule, an excuse frequently used by Republican-nominated judges to avoid revealing how they might rule.
“I also don’t know what the arguments would be,” she added, referring, presumably, to a case that sought to challenge Medicare’s validity. A seemingly incredulous Feinstein described Medicare as “really sacrosanct in this country.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/barrett-wont-say-if-medicare-is-constitutional/ar-BB1a1KeQ?li=BBnb7Kz
This reinforces progressives' basic point; that right wingers having lost the ability to win elections absent gerrymandering, voter suppression and antidemocratic institutions are increasingly relying on conservative judges to thwart the will of the People. If a judge really won't say that these programs are constitutional more than a half century after their enactment, it's fairly obvious she harbors the way out of mainstream view that they are not.
Of course, she's entitled to her far out opinions and of course, the American People are entitled to evaluate the effect on public policy that allowing such judges to be the ultimate arbiters of the Constitution when they cast their votes in a few weeks.
"Feinstein then proceeded to read from a brief 2015 essay by Michael Rappaport, a conservative legal scholar at the University of San Diego. Titled “The Unconstitutionality of Social Security and Medicare,” the paper argues that “these programs would have never taken their pernicious form if the Constitution’s original meaning had been followed in the first place.”
Barrett is, like Rappaport, a constitutional originalist. An originalist philosophy would be consistent with Rappaport’s conclusion that popular though they may be, New Deal and Great Society social programs — often called “entitlements” because qualified recipients are “entitled” to them by law — represent an illegitimate expansion of the administrative state.
Conservative icon Ronald Reagan got his start in politics by recording a now famous speech against Medicare when Democrats proposed it in 1961. He called it “socialized medicine,” the same phrase Republicans would use to attack the Affordable Care Act 50 years later.
Shrinking the “welfare state” has been the project of many Republicans in Congress, who almost uniformly support Barrett’s nomination to the high court. In 2017, Barrett criticized Chief Justice John Roberts — himself a judicial conservative appointed by a Republican president — because, she wrote, he “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”
With that view plainly in mind, Feinstein asked Barrett if she agreed with “originalists who say that the Medicare program is unconstitutional.”
Barrett said she was “not familiar” with Rappaport’s article. Pressed by Feinstein for an opinion on the broader point about Medicare’s legitimacy, Barrett said she could not “answer that question in the abstract,” citing the so-called Ginsburg rule, an excuse frequently used by Republican-nominated judges to avoid revealing how they might rule.
“I also don’t know what the arguments would be,” she added, referring, presumably, to a case that sought to challenge Medicare’s validity. A seemingly incredulous Feinstein described Medicare as “really sacrosanct in this country.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/barrett-wont-say-if-medicare-is-constitutional/ar-BB1a1KeQ?li=BBnb7Kz
This reinforces progressives' basic point; that right wingers having lost the ability to win elections absent gerrymandering, voter suppression and antidemocratic institutions are increasingly relying on conservative judges to thwart the will of the People. If a judge really won't say that these programs are constitutional more than a half century after their enactment, it's fairly obvious she harbors the way out of mainstream view that they are not.
Of course, she's entitled to her far out opinions and of course, the American People are entitled to evaluate the effect on public policy that allowing such judges to be the ultimate arbiters of the Constitution when they cast their votes in a few weeks.
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