The Roberts Court Decision

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The much-debated Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) came swiftly on Thursday after endless speculation. We saw immediately why it took so long to deliver. Surprise was universal. Conservatives responded boldly to early erroneous reports that the Court had overturned the law on constitutional grounds. That turned out not to be the case. Only one small facet was reversed. While the court found that the federal government could not take away all the Medicaid money it gives a state if it does not expand coverage as directed, it does leave the Federal government the ability to oblige compliance by awarding money for additional changes.

President Obama was a big winner.  Though Democrats had been clearing whistling in the dark about the consequences of the Supreme Court ruling against them, they seemed very relieved with the unexpected outcome in their favor. The president now has the validation of the Court on his biggest single domestic accomplishment going into the 2012 election. The hotly anticipated ruling gave him a second chance to make his case with the American people at a time when some of benefits related to expanded access are just becoming apparent. The challenge he has had all along has been the reality that a majority of voting Americans are currently covered by their employers, the state safety net or another third party provider. That has dwindled in recent years, but the majority of people going to the polls are still covered and therefore concerned with the coverage of others. Because of the recession, many more younger Americans are not covered because they cannot find jobs or jobs with health insurance benefits. This has been slow to sink in to families, who are finally getting it. A post-decision poll shows Americans now split down the middle on the SCOTUS ruling, a gain for the president.

Republicans screamed foul Thursday led by the vinegary Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Eric Canter, the House majority leader who lost no time scheduling another repeal vote in the House which has no chance of reversing anything. With Romney as their standard bearer, Republicans will have some trouble carrying their kill-the-bill arguments into the November election. Even though polls still show a majority favoring some degree of repeal or change in the law, a consensus on this will be harder to achieve as dissenters will have differing parts they wish to repeal or retain.

The biggest winner in all this is Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who moved over to join the Liberal wing of the court in keeping the law in place and a clear issue for the November race, while limiting the interstate commerce powers of Congress with the Conservatives wing. Everyone was fixed on Justice Anthony Kennedy who voted with the minority in the process and not on the Chief Justice who engineered this entire outcome rather skillfully. After all, it is his court with his name, just as the Warren Court is remembered for its chief justice. From here on in, the court will be known as the Roberts Court, even if Roberts casts his votes with the right-wing persistently which is possible. Those of us, including me, who saw Roberts and Alito as the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of the current judiciary have been proved wrong. Roberts clearly showed judicial restraint here in not making law by overturning the one passed in 2010. He talked about this at his confirmation hearings and has now delivered. It will certainly increase his clout with his fellow justices as  a force to be reckoned with.

I believe the biggest losers may be those Republicans on the far right who lost no time in getting out their Impeach Roberts banners and T-shirts, and who are showing up on Sunday talk shows still insisting the law is unconstitutional, and who plan to stage a meaningless vote in August because they know in their brains they are right and everyone else is wrong. The bullying vote on Attorney General Holder’s contempt citation coupled with the NRA strong-arming tactics on the same day as the Roberts decision exposed the opposition for the tyrants they have been in recent years. The arrogance we have seen from those Congressional Republicans who have never accepted Obama’s election as president and now reject the SCOTUS ruling, their meanness of spirit, their entitlement mentality with which they pursue pet social issues while the economy struggles and unemployment reduces at a trickle, may now well become a major campaign issue. And that is a good thing. We see what increasing tax breaks for the wealthy like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers has done for job creation and for the national election process, where ‘private’ ads,  like daily brain-washings of the faithful, clog up TV and radio airways interminably. Hopefully Independents have had enough. And hopefully traditional Republicans will move to take back their party.

As we have said in these pages, the Reform Law was not what we needed. It addressed access but skimped on the cost challenge which is driving the crisis. We need to go back and build on the ACA, making corrections and improvements, just as we did with Social Security and Medicare in the past. A divided court has said we do not need to go back to square one and start again. That is a relief. It took too long to get any reform of any kind enacted. Just repealing ‘Obamacare’ (as the right-wingers insist on calling this complex bill with many inputs) is not a solution to one of the largest problems facing this country. We need real ideas with detail behind them to enact meaningful reform. Nay-sayers need not apply. Just being angry and mean and stubborn and inhumane and mouthy has never been the best way to solve our big problems. In fact it is the same approach that drove this country into Civil War.

It is now up to the American electorate to decide what comes next in health care reform this November. The choices in a national election have rarely been this clear-cut. The opposing sides have rarely been this exposed. Hopefully the electorate is ready and will step up and do what is right for the next generation of Americans.

Tom Godfrey

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