By: Christen Varley – April, 2012
I spent the better portion of last week reading, watching, and waiting for news from the Supreme Court. The hearings held to determine the constitutionality of the individual mandate, as well as the entirety of Obamacare, are over and we Americans must now wait for the verdict.
I don’t think it’s any secret that I would like to see this legislation completely scrapped and I say that as someone whose job will be lost if that happens. (No one will pay me to advocate against policy that no longer exists.) I think, however, that most of us realize the decision we are so nervously awaiting is about much more that Obamacare.
As a tea party activist, I have watched the entire Obamacare drama play out like I watch videos of traffic accidents. I’ve been fascinated and horrified at the same time. Obamacare is a disaster for our economy, a disaster for increasing access to quality health care and a disaster for the preservation and protection of constitutional freedom in our country. It needs to go.
The policy is so flawed there is no “fix”.
If, as a nation, agree there is a need to address the costs and delivery of health care services, fine. Obamacare addresses neither. It does not lower costs or increase access to care. In fact, it does the exact opposite. Obamacare merely provides an incredibly expensive insurance card to almost every individual residing within the United States.
It is hard for me to conceive, after hearing the arguments put forth by both sides, how the justices could allow the individual mandate to stand. There simply is no precedent for requiring people to engage in commerce as a condition of existing. Of course, for every person who understands that common sense statement there is another who claims that power must exist.
Now that the decision is out of our hands, we should be thinking about how we would address the either outcome. We need to be prepared to continue the battle for repeal or the battle to hold on to the few federal legislative seats we have and how we can attain more. One thing we can be sure of, the left will be either emboldened or enraged and we will need to be prepared to defend our freedoms more than ever before.
Tea party organizations across the country went on full offense this past week. They rallied in DC, at federal buildings and in state capitols all over the country in support of repealing Obamacare. The President and his administration seemed perplexed at our efforts. The left, via their cohorts in the media, had a lot of fun at our expense. But you and I know from the conversations we had with family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers that the overwhelming sentiment in our country is that Obamacare is not good and may even be harmful.
We need to ride this wave. We need to keep having talking. Win or lose on repeal, the Obama administration and the left are going to keep the conversation going. We must be prepared to have these conversations as well.
Repealing Obamacare is not about choosing rich over poor, white over black and Hispanic. Repealing Obamcare is about preserving our very basic freedoms. When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia compared Obamacare’s individual mandate to the government making you eat broccoli, he was not making a facetious statement.
He was taking the argument to its next logical step. If government can now declare something is good for all of us, it can require us to purchase it. I don’t know about you but I’m pretty insecure about government making decisions like this. Look at how many in the current administration are still convinced global warming is real. Imagine what these crackpots, with their reliance on engineered, politically motivated science, might require of us next.
So no matter what the Supreme Court decides on Obamacare, the battle goes on.
We cannot for one moment lose momentum. We need to continue the discussion – with facts and logic. Voters are looking for solutions to problems the current administration has failed to solve. Policies that assist us in recovering from economic crises are policies that allow the ingenuity of an independent free market to expand to meet demand.
Policies that create jobs are those that cut taxes on the job creators so more capital is available for investment in business expansion. Policies that will solve our cost and delivery issues within the healthcare industry are those that eliminate mandates and regulations.
We have seen what big government does – it stifles growth and tramples freedom.
Let’s continue talking about giving smaller government a chance.