The first steps Republicans should take

● Repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board. This expression of the progressive mind is an artifact of the Affordable Care Act and may be the most anti-constitutional measure ever enacted. It certainly violates the first words of the first section of the first article of the Constitution: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress.” The board’s purported function is to achieve the act’s purpose of cost-containment by reducing Medicare spending. When the IPAB’s 15 presidential appointees make what the Affordable Care Act calls a “legislative proposal” limiting reimbursements to doctors, this proposal automatically becomes law unless Congress passes a similar measure cutting Medicare spending. Under this constitutional travesty, an executive-branch agency makes laws unless the legislative branch enacts alternative means of achieving the executive agency’s aim. The Affordable Care Act stipulates that no measure for the abolition of the board can be introduced before 2017 or after Feb. 1, 2017, and must be enacted by Aug. 15 of that year. So, one Congress presumed to bind all subsequent Congresses in order to achieve progressivism’s consistent aim — abolishing limited government by emancipating presidents from restraint by the separation of powers. This impertinence by the 111th Congress requires a firm rebuke by the 114th.