Health Care Struck Down

We should always choose our words wisely. Of course telling the truth all the time helps because nobody has a good enough memory to be a good liar.

Many politicians are willing to say whatever they need to say to gain favor with whoever they are talking to at the time. I suppose they usually get by with it but now everything they say is recorded and searchable on the Internet. It looks like to me that they would watch every word and speak the truth. But it seems Americans will never pay close attention and the liars will never learn.

It is a rare occasion that a politicians words actually catch up to him but this may be one of those occasions. In the 2008 campaign Mr. Obama was firmly against a position because Mrs. Clinton was firmly for it. However as President Obama he has been as firmly for it as Mrs. Clinton ever was. Yet nobody called his hand on it until now. A Federal Judge quoted candidate Obama while striking down President Obama's universal health care plan.

It will be interesting to see how widely reported the story is reported.

The link and story are below.

Davy

Judge uses Obama's words against him.

Washington Times LINK

In ruling against President Obama's health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama's own position from the 2008 campaign against him, arguing that there are other ways to tackle health care short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.

"I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that 'if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,'" Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.

Judge Vinson, a federal judge in the northern district of Florida, struck down the entire health care law as unconstitutional on Monday, though he is allowing the Obama administration to continue to implement and enforce it while the government appeals his ruling.

The footnote was attached to the most critical part of Judge Vinson's ruling, in which he said the "principal dispute" in the case was not whether Congress has the power to tackle health care, but whether it has the power to compel the purchase of insurance.

Judge Vinson used Mr. Obama's campaign words from an interview with CNN to show that there are other options that could fall within the Constitution — including then-candidate Obama's plan.

During the presidential campaign, one key difference between Mr. Obama and his chief opponent, then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, was Mrs. Clinton's plan required all Americans to purchase insurance, and Mr. Obama's did not.

In the heat of the primaries in 2008, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predicted Mr. Obama's opposition to an individual mandate could come back to haunt him: "If Mr. Obama gets to the White House and tries to achieve universal coverage, he'll find that it can't be done without mandates — but if he tries to institute mandates, the enemies of reform will use his own words against him."

Mr. Obama has since defended the constitutionality of the individual mandate, arguing it's the linchpin of the program to bring in more customers, which is key to expanding the availability and affordability of insurance.

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