Obamacare Has Literally Replaced the Constitution

obamacare-new-constitution

The textbook account of how laws are made is for children. It
presents the procedure as if it were governed by the Constitution. This
is silly. That went out with high-button shoes.

The legal system that prevails today is administrative law:
rule by government bureaucracies that cannot be fired.

The story of how
this legal revolution has re-shaped law in the West, threatening a new
tyranny, appears in the 45-page introduction to Law and Revolution
(1983), a great book by Harvard University’s legal historian Harold
Berman.

Those 45 pages are among the most important that I have ever
read.

A recent study by the Cato Institute describes one section of Obamacare: the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB. This unelected board will set prices and payment systems for medicine under the plan.

Obamacare was created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act (PPACA), which in turn creates IPAB. According to the Cato report,
written by a lawyer,

When the unelected government officials on this board
submit a legislative proposal to Congress, it automatically becomes law:
PPACA requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to implement
it.

Blocking an IPAB “proposal” requires at a minimum that the House and
the Senate and the president agree on a substitute.

The Board’s edicts
therefore can become law without congressional action, congressional
approval, meaningful congressional oversight, or being subject to a
presidential veto.

Citizens will have no power to challenge IPAB’s
edicts in court.

But what if — this is 99% hypothetical — a majority in Congress
decides that the IPAB payment schedule (taxes) is not a good idea? Well,
tough bananas.

PPACA forbids Congress from repealing IPAB outside of a
seven-month window in the year 2017, and even then requires a
three-fifths majority in both chambers.

A heretofore unreported feature
of PPACA dictates that if Congress misses that repeal window, PPACA
prohibits Congress from ever altering an IPAB “proposal.”

By restricting
lawmaking powers of future Congresses, PPACA thus attempts to amend the
Constitution by statute.

IPAB’s unelected members will have effectively unfettered power to
impose taxes and ration care for all Americans, whether the government
pays their medical bills or not.

In some circumstances, just one
political party or even one individual would have full command of IPAB’s
lawmaking powers.

IPAB truly is independent, but in the worst sense of
the word. It wields power independent of Congress, independent of the
president, independent of the judiciary, and independent of the will of
the people.

This means that the Constitutional sovereignty is a dead concept,
unless five people on the U.S. Supreme Court declare the law
unconstitutional.

This will serve as a legal precedent. New laws will create similar boards.

Kiss the Constitution goodbye.

It was all so easy.

The 22-page report is here.

Continue Reading on www.cato.org

 

Gary North – June 22, 2012 – TeaPartyEconomist

 

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