Cardin: You know what gov’t does well? Medicare!

posted at 1:36 pm on August 11, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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It looks as though a bunch of un-Americans are unhappy with Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) over his support for ObamaCare.  A Towson University crowd repeatedly jeered Cardin for his answers to challenges on the health-care reform bill, with anger rising after Cardin admitted that funding for ObamaCare hadn’t yet been established.  When Cardin held Medicare out as an example of how government made anything cheaper and more efficient, he nuked the fridge:

Cardin said how to pay for the bill has not yet been worked out, a comment that prompted even more derision from the audience. Some shouted, “Taxes!” and others shouted, “Spend, Ben, spend!”

At one point, four police officers strolled down the two aisles of the auditorium at Towson University and stood in front of the stage.

Cardin defended the health bills, saying they would provide more choice, and that there would be more people, not fewer, with insurance.

One questioner asked for an example of anything the government had taken over and provided cheaper. Cardin cited the national parks system and Medicare.

That drew more boos and jeers.

Cardin said Medicare is cheaper than private insurance for the elderly, adding, “your government runs it more effectively.”

Medicare?  Say, isn’t that the system that threatens to drown the US in debt for the next century?  Isn’t that the system that does such a poor job of compensating providers that many of them will no longer take new patients under its coverage?  That’s the program that Obama will cut by $500 billion over the next ten years to help fund health-care reform … right?

It might be hard to top that knee-slapper, but Cardin gives it his best shot.  At about the 48-minute mark of the C-SPAN video of the event, a constituent asks Cardin this question:

Q: Would you please specify which article and section of the United States Constitution gives the Congress the right to forcibly interfere with my right to contract for my own health care and that of my family?  Please cite the constitutional article.

CARDIN: Article I.  Article I.

I assume that Cardin means Article I, Section 8 – The Powers of Congress, even though it says no such thing.  For the record, this is the entirety of that portion of the Constitution:

Section 8 – Powers of Congress

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;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The argument offered by statists for these kinds of schemes falls on two portions of the section: “provide … for the general welfare” and interstate commerce.  However, neither gives Congress the right to interfere with lawful and free contracts between individuals, and since health care is not illegal, such contracts would be lawful.  “General welfare” refers to the nation as a whole, not individuals within it.  The men who wrote the document would have been horrified to learn that people interpreted that as a lever through which Congress claimed the power to mandate a standard of living for each individual citizen; the entire thrust of the document argues in opposition to that, and puts the citizen above the government as a means to check its power. (As an aside, I find it hilarious that the very people who cannot find an individual right to bear arms in the portion of this document which focuses solely on individual rights somehow finds an individual application in “general welfare.”)

The interstate commerce clause has been misinterpreted for decades in favor of greater federal power, but even those misreadings never granted DC the power to block contracts for legal goods and services at the consumer level.  It regulates the commerce between the states, ie, one state bargaining with another, and states bargaining with Indian tribes, in order to avoid the kind of conflicts that had doomed the previous Articles of Confederation.  While Congress does have the power to block insurers from crossing state lines to sell policies — a very stupid policy, but one that falls under Article I, Section 8 — it does not have the constitutional authority to dictate the terms of the policies sold within the states.

Cardin obviously couldn’t give the right answer, which is that Congress has no authority for that kind of action.  I’m sure he knows it, but he can’t admit it.  The audience certainly knew it, however.

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