Elena Kagan: How Can Giving a Boatload of Money to Poor People be Unconstitutional?

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | March 30, 2012 | Rush Limbaugh

[Kaslin]

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I have the Elena Kagan sound bite. I know that I have total, 100% credibility with you. When I tell you something, you know it's true. But I want you to hear it. This was Wednesday at the Supreme Court during the third day of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the health care reform law. This is the most junior justice, Elena Kagan, a former solicitor general for Obama, who openly cheered the passage of Obamacare when it went through the House. And she then worked on its defense at the Supreme Court. She should have ethically recused herself. But she didn't. And here is her opinion, in the form of a question to one of the lawyers, doesn't matter who. She's talking about the commerce clause and coercion. She doesn't understand the argument that forcing people to buy health insurance violates the commerce clause.

This is a woman who taught law at Harvard. She was the dean of Harvard Law. Which means she's smarter than anybody else. She's smarter than the dean of law at Columbia and she's smarter than the dean at Stanford. She's just as smart as the dean over there at Oxford. There's nobody smarter. When you're the dean of Harvard Law, you're it. And she has no clue. She cannot conceive, she has no concept of the notion that the federal government cannot force citizens to buy anything. By the same token, the government can't force you not to buy anything. Works both ways. So the lawyers are talking about this using the term coercion, coerce people. This compulsory contract, which is an oxymoron. And she's frustrated. She doesn't understand why people don't understand this. She doesn't understand why people think this is unconstitutional. It's a mystery to her. You mean we can't give people health care? I don't understand. Here's how she said it.

KAGAN: Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion? In other words, the federal government is here saying: We're giving you a boatload of money. There are no matching funds requirement. There are no extraneous conditions attached to it. It's just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people's health care. It doesn't sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.

RUSH: I am sitting here, if you're not watching on Dittocam you can't see me with my mouth all the way open, in stunned disbelief. Folks, this is why all week I have been urging you: Don't think they're smarter than you are. Don't fall for that. Don't grant them that. These are some of the most uninformed, ill-informed, arrogant, conceited people you will ever encounter. I'm not even gonna assume she knows what she's talking about. What it could be is that the federal government is passing the burden of Medicaid to the states. In Obamacare they are off-loading some of the costs to the states. They're demanding that states pick up Medicaid costs, and she is of the belief that the states are gonna get the money that the federal government currently spends on Medicaid, but they aren't. The states aren't going to be able to afford this. And unlike the federal government, they can't go print money.

They have to balance their budgets at the state. It's very difficult for them to even borrow. They do, they sell bonds and so forth, but it's not nearly as easy to deficit spend in the states as it is at the federal government. And Obamacare takes the money in Medicare and shifts it to the states so that they can show on paper that the overall cost on the federal side is not nearly as high as it really is. And to her, this is a boatload of money, what could possibly be wrong? A big gift from the federal government. Obamacare is just a big gift. We're giving this money, and there aren't any strings attached to it. Boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people's health care. That doesn't sound coercive. What it sounds is clueless. I mean totally, genuinely clueless. And this woman's a Supreme Court justice.

END TRANSCRIPT

[GeronL]

If the government can force you to buy health insurance it can force you to buy healthy food, it can force you to join a gym, it can decide whether you are allowed to have kids or a snack.... all in the name of “health”.

[LADY J]

The typical lefty!! Government has no boatloads of money or gifts. The money is being confiscated from 'WE THE PEOPLE' & government or Miss Piggy has no right to gift it to those that didn't earn it.

It proves that if the government is sitting around with boatloads of money - WE THE PEOPLE ARE BEING OVERTAXED!!!

[21twelve]

Obama’s quotes from 2008. Midway through is “good”, where he talks about how the courts weren’t radical enough, and didn’t break free from the constraints placed by the Founding Fathers. And I pray to God that Obama is losing his chance now.

**************************

“If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples, so that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.”

“But,” Obama said, “The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, as least as it’s been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.”

Obama said “one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement, was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change, and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

[Monorprise]

hahah Miss Kagan, please allow me to “shop” your house for gifts to give you. I’m sure you will be over joyed that I not only know what you want but have given you it just as “miss placed” your old one.
LoL

[SoldierDad]

Yeah, but if you pound two rocks together you can create sparks. The same can’t be said if you pound two liberal brains together.

[ScottinVA]

“Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion? In other words, the federal government is here saying: We’re giving you a boatload of money. There are no matching funds requirement. There are no extraneous conditions attached to it. It’s just a boatload of federal money for you to take and spend on poor people’s health care. It doesn’t sound coercive to me, I have to tell you.”

Can we have any stronger evidence this “woman” is incapable of rendering a constitutional judgment on this matter? She’s one of the prime advocates!

[manc]

thank you , very much appreciated

[apillar]

I hope somebody can get a picture of Kagan today after the Supreme Court “vote” on Obamacare. That would tell anybody what they need to know about how the court is going to rule. Since Kagan is so emotionally invested in Obamacare (many say she even wrote large portions of it), if she looks like she sick to her stomach or just got kicked in the gut, it's pretty safe to assume the court voted to strike Obamacare down.

[MrB]

I saw what you did there...

[Navy Patriot]

It's called theft, bandita.

[dforest]

I laughed at this woman when she talked of Federal money like it was a separate entity from taxpayer money.

Federal money that we don't have is borrowed money to be later ripped off the people who make this country work.

Kagen should have recused herself. The SCOTUS will only lose credibility if they allow the opinion of this unqualified hack to stand.

[SMARTY]

Maybe she thought it came off the ‘gobmint’ money tree out behind the WH!! :)

[ScottinVA]

[Lurking Libertarian]

Kagan clearly has no concept of the constitutional issue that the other justices were quick to grasp...if the federal government can compel individual citizens to buy health insurance they can compel them to do anything else and that fundamentally changes the role of limited government in the US Constitution.

Actually, Rush got it wrong here. This quote is from the third day of arguments which had nothing to do with the Commerce Clause or with the individual mandate. The issue was whether the expansion of Medicare was "coercing" the states.

[stephenjohnbanker]

” The wise lesbian speaks. A wise lesbian and a wise Latina, isn’t that special? “

Uh..NO

[Mr. Bird]

I liked her work on King of Queens.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-—Why is a big gift from the federal government a matter of coercion?——

Please make it stop. I can’t take it anymore. Really. I can’t.

[MrB]

[ScottinVA]

[MrB]

Depends on the definition of “special”...

Could be like replying to “how do you like this?” with “interesting, indeed”.