I’m cheering these lawsuits on, but not holding my breath for 9 people in black robes to do the right thing and shoot down this giant unfunded mandate. We have to work towards November 2010 and November 2012. Thats’ where the solution is. Repeal and replace!!!!
Dick Morris outlined this strategy in November in a pretty good article. Just need to pick up on it more in the months ahead:
Obamacare = Big State Tax Hikes:
Anxious to avoid raising taxes too much to pay for their health care proposals, the Obama Administration and its Congressional allies hit on a great new idea: Make the states raise their taxes to fund the program instead.
[snip]
In some states, like New York, where Medicaid covers everyone making 150% of the poverty level already, there will not be any extra required spending.
But not so in California, which only covers 100% of the poverty level. Were the House bill to pass, the already fiscally beleaguered state would have to increase its Medicaid spending on poor people by 50%, at least an extra $2 billion a year and perhaps more.
In many Southern states, the Medicaid program only covers a portion of those living below the poverty level. For these states, the requirement to cover all those in poverty and then 50% more will cause enormous increases in taxes. In Arkansas and Louisiana, where swing Senators Pryor, Lincoln, and Landrieu come from, the cost could exceed $1 billion for each state each year.
Unfunded mandates for state spending imposed from on high in Washington have always rankled governors. The Senators and Congressmen in Washington get the credit for spreading largesse but the Governors in the states get the blame for the taxes that are needed to pay for it.
Since Democrats currently control the vast majority of governorships, this process of making their own party members take the rap for raising taxes is politically self-destructive in the extreme. But Obama is so desperate to pass his health care legislation that he doesnt care what havoc in his party he reaps in the process.
The question now is whether the governors of the fifty states, particularly the Democrats, are going to sit idly by and let their budgets be destroyed by the health care bill.