Tag U.S. Supreme Court

June 28, 2012 by Hannah

Kinzinger Plans to Fight Government Takeover of Health Care

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

Shortly after the Supreme Court released its decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Representative Adam Kinzinger (IL-11) weighed in on the ruling making a formal statement and then answered questions from Washington DC via a phone press conference call. Mr. Kinzinger further explained his thoughts on Obamacare to reporters from various media agencies:

Wanda Rohl this morning said, “The government already makes people buy auto insurance. The government already makes people do other things, and we are already paying for the uninsured anyway, so she’d rather have everybody covered. Could you respond to that?”

Kinzinger: “I think Wanda’s made it clear that she believes that there’s a huge role for basically a full government takeover of healthcare. It’s an area where we fundamentally disagree. State government—and keep in mind it is state—can make people buy car insurance, but they can’t force people to drive. You don’t have to have a license to simply exist as a person. In this case, it looks like the Supreme Court agreed that the Federal government does not have the power to do that. However, again, [Obamacare proponents] went and said, ‘This is actually a tax increase and the Federal government does have a right to tax.’

“So, from that perspective, this is a tax increase on the American people and it is not saying that the federal government has a right to make people buy something simply for existing.”

What is the next step?

Kinzinger: “The reality is, the Supreme Court says the healthcare law can survive today, but I think the healthcare law ends on November 6th when Obama is not reelected. We’re going to vote to repeal this once again. We’ve already voted many, many times to repeal this law, and just because the Supreme Court upheld it today doesn’t make it anymore popular. The American people are still very upset. This is the law that’s going to put us deeper into debt and reduce the quality of healthcare that people are getting, and so we are going to continue to fight to repeal this entire bill.”

What will happen if the Republicans don’t get veto-proof majority control of the Senate in November? Won’t we still have this quagmire?

Kinzinger: “That’s the reality, but the fact is, the American people are pretty upset about this law. It’s just like what you saw back when the law passed initially: there were a lot of Democrat defections because they felt the wrath of the American people. I tell you: a lot of people out here in Washington, D. C. are political folks and they understand what public pressure is. I think that if the Senate is going to stand in the way of a repeal of this very unpopular law, some of these more moderate Democrats or these Democrats in tough districts are going to understand that the American people are not happy and potentially flip. There’s no doubt that today the news of the Supreme Court’s decision was a blow to the efforts to repeal it, but that’s not going to stop us from fully repealing or making attempts to fully repeal this law.”

Is this going to be primarily what the election is about as we head into November? Do you think other issues are going to be droned out now?

KInzinger: “No, I think the election is always about unemployment, about the terrible economy we’re in, the fact that the President, when he was elected, said, ‘If I don’t turn this economy around, it’ll be a one-term proposition.’ I think that’s going to be number one. The American people are hurting. They want jobs. They want a president that actually understands that and tries to lead. Is this going to be one of the top issues? Yes, it will be. Healthcare will now be one of the top issues discussed. The number one issue is still going to be the fact that too many of our neighbors do not have the opportunity to go out and get jobs, and it’s going be a referendum, partially, on the fact that the President has not lead the American people and still refuses to lead on that issue.”

What would the Republicans replace the Obama healthcare bill with?

Kinzinger: “Well, as I mentioned in my statement, there’s a lot of it, including allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines. Portability for health insurance: you shouldn’t have to lose your health insurance when you switch jobs. That actually stems from back in the day when somebody would work for the same corporation for twenty years. Now, if you leave a company, you should be able to take your insurance plan with you. We need tort reforms, so doctors don’t have to spend [money] on unnecessary tests to practice defensively; they can practice the best for that doctor-patient relationship.

“Allowing small businesses to band together with the buying power of big businesses to dilute the pre-existing conditions that may have somebody have to pay way too much money. There’s a lot of potential things that we can do to replace this law. The fact is, we’ve got to bring the cost of healthcare down, and then we’ve got to figure out how to fully cover everybody through lower costs. But you can’t do that with just the government takeover of healthcare like we see here, and with writing a big, blank government check when the government’s out of money.”

June 28, 2012 by Hannah

Nine Lives: The U.S. Supreme Court Justices

The following article was originally published by Illinois Review.

With its wide range of ideologies, the Court has heroes for progressives, libertarians, and conservatives. And in the boxing ring of the Supreme Court chambers these justices engage in some of the highest-stake intellectual fisticuffs ever carried out.

Who are the nine people that decided the fate of Obamacare? It’s worth the time to examine the lives and characteristics of the members of the highest court in the land.

Two justices (Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito) greeted the world in Trenton, New Jersey, and other justices hail from as far south as Pin Point, Georgia (Clarence Thomas), and as far west as San Francisco (Stephen Breyer). Interestingly, none of the justices were born in the Midwest.

Though some were born into humble circumstances and others enjoyed a wealthy upbringing, all justices obtained their law degrees from Ivy League institutions, with five attending Harvard, three attending Yale, and one attending Columbia.

This uniformity in choice of schools is not reflected in the justices’ ideologies, however. Given the amount of time many justices spend on the Court and the scope of cases they consider, there is a wealth of information about the political views of most of the Supreme Court justices. Two measures commonly used to compare justices’ ideologies are the Martin-Quinn score and the percent or fraction of conservative votes cast by a justice in non-unanimous decisions.

The Martin-Quinn score describes a justice’s political ideology for a given year by assigning more negative values to more liberal ideologies and more positive values to more conservative ideologies. In this way, the evolution of a given justice can be tracked over time, and justices can rapidly be compared to one another. For 2010, the court’s ideology as indicated by their Martin-Quinn scores ranged from 0.024 (Stephen Breyer) to 5.689 (Clarence Thomas). The median score was 2.071 (Anthony Kennedy’s, the most common swing vote). The justices range from casting a more conservative vote about 37.2% of the time (Stephen Breyer) to 82.2% of the time (Clarence Thomas).

How much time said heroes have spent on the Court or can expect to stay there varies widely. The average number of years the justices on this court have served is 13 years, but this disguises a bimodal distribution, with four justices having served six or less years, and five justices finishing 17-25 years on the bench. Liberal justices have spent 1-18 years on the Court, while conservative justices have spent 6-25 years there.

The fact that justices can exert their influence for a quarter century and more shows the breadth of influence a given administration can have years after the Oval Office has been redecorated. Five presidents can claim the current justices as their enduring legacy, with two current justices appointed by Ronald Reagan through Barack Obama, with the exception of H. W. Bush, who has only one appointee remaining. Notably, this appointee is Clarence Thomas, the most conservative justice currently serving on the Court.

The long-term influence of each justice explains the full vetting that each candidate should undergo, and the verbal flayings that some candidates have endured. Still, the confirmation process and final vote varies widely. Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy were unanimously confirmed (98-0 and 97-0), while the Senate was most divided on Clarence Thomas (52-48), followed closely by Samuel Alito (58-42). Of the liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced the least opposition (96-3), and Elena Kagan faced the most (63-37). And, of course, we’re speaking only of those candidates who survived the potential borking.

The heterogeneity of the court extends further than ideology or vetting intensity. The justices range in age from 52 to 79, with an average age of 66. The most recent addition to the Court is also the youngest of all time: Elena Kagan, who is 52 years old. The two most elderly justices are Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia, from the further ends of the ideological divide.

Another distinguishing factor are the justices’ religious views. The current justices are either Roman Catholic or Jewish, with a 6-3 split. Three of the four liberal justices are Jewish, and all of the more conservative justices in addition to Sonia Sotomayor are Roman Catholic.

All of the individual traits and choices of the justices—their upbringing, ideologies, etc.—impact their decisions in small and large ways. Hearing their interpretations of the Constitution as it pertains to some of the most pressing issues of our day is nerve-racking because we know every human, regardless of how well-educated, well-informed, or well-intentioned, is fallible.

We champion some justices and question others. We wonder just how flexible or forthright each justice will prove to be. In the midst of it all we can see the wisdom of our Founders in entrusting this power to a panel of justices instead of a single, omnipotent Supreme Court Justice. May this Court and every ensuing Court recognize and uphold the letter and the spirit of our highest law.

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