Constitutional Questions are Serious Questions

Julia Shaw / November 02, 2009

When CNS News reporter asked Nancy Pelosi “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?,” her response was “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Is Pelosi serious? Did the Speaker Pelosi really say that asking “is this Constitutional” is a trivial question? Could her statement be a gaffe?

Nope. It’s no gaffe. Pelosi’s press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, clarified for the record that asking the speaker of the House to articulate the Constitutional authority for the health care mandate “is not a serious question.”

Frequent readers of the Foundry will recall that we have asked is the Individual Mandate Constitutional and is National Health Insurance Constitutional? We argued in August that the healthcare legislation is unconstitutional: specifically, neither the necessary and proper clause, the general welfare clause, nor the commerce clause of the Constitution give Congress the authority to mandate a national health care. (more…)