GOP Platform Declares Medicaid Unconstitutional

[Tx4obama]

Almost immediately after President Obama took office, many Republican politicians seized upon a distorted vision of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment that would leave America nearly incapable of governing itself. Indeed, top Republicans — including U.S. Senators, governors and members of Congress — have claimed that everything from Social Security to Medicare to federal disaster relief to national child labor laws all violate the Constitution. A similarly erroneous vision of the Constitution has now infected the GOP’s party platform:

We support the review and examination of all federal agencies to eliminate wasteful spending, operational inefficiencies, or abuse of power to determine whether they are performing functions that are better performed by the States. These functions, as appropriate, should be returned to the States in accordance with the Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We affirm that all legislation, rules, and regulations must conform and public servants must adhere to the U.S. Constitution, as originally intended by the Framers. . . . Scores of entrenched federal programs violate the constitutional mandates of federalism by taking money from the States, laundering it through various federal agencies, only to return to the States shrunken grants with mandates attached. We propose wherever feasible to leave resources where they originate: in the homes and neighborhoods of the taxpayers.

The GOP platform closely echoes a brief filed by GOP mega attorney Paul Clement on behalf of several Republican elected officials challenging the Affordable Care Act in the Supreme Court. According to Clement, because federal revenues are “composed of tax dollars collected from the States’ own residents,” it somehow follows that state governments have a claim on federal revenue. The GOP platform suggests that this claim is so strong that any federal program which grants money to the states is unconstitutional if it also requires the states to comply with certain rules in order to receive that money.

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Full article here: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/31/778371/gop-platform-declares-medicaid-unconstitutional/

[freshwest]

1. K & R for visibility. Sharing with apathetic voters who say 'we have 2 bad choices.'

[NashvilleLefty]

2. They might want to check the $ they pay vs the $

they receive. A simple Google search shows that most Red States get more than they pay in.

[treestar]

3. The courts decide that

and it may have already been decided. Idiots.