{"id":11359,"date":"2010-03-23T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-03-23T21:13:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T21:13:05","slug":"sacramento-republicans-teabag-the-health-care-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/23\/sacramento-republicans-teabag-the-health-care-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Sacramento Republicans Teabag the Health Care Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we brought you the report that <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/11350\/steve-poizner-calls-health-care-reform-unconstitutional-tom-campbell-calls-for-repeal\">four of the five Republican candidates for governor\/US Senate<\/a> are calling the federal health care bill &#8220;unconstitutional&#8221; and\/or want it repealed. So far, Meg Whitman is maintaining a deafening silence, although that might be because nobody in the media has yet asked her about it.<\/p>\n<p>Today we learned that the California State Senate Republican caucus is transforming itself into the Teabag Caucus with a <a href=\"http:\/\/cssrc.us\/news.aspx?id=7768\">their own claims the bill is unconstitutional<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Republican Senators are calling upon California Attorney General Jerry Brown to join other states in challenging the constitutionality of the federal government&#8217;s health-care overhaul. Citing the unprecedented over-reaching of the federal government&#8217;s policy into areas traditionally overseen by states and individuals, the Republican Senators believe the measure is an unfunded federal mandate and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) submitted a letter to the Attorney General requesting that California join other states challenging the measure. Harman pointed to the following concerns:<\/p>\n<p> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Expansion of federal authority under the Commerce Clause,<br \/>\n<br \/> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Imposes an unfunded mandate upon economically struggling states, and<br \/>\n<br \/> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Illegally expanding federal authority over state&#8217;s sovereign rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s just one problem with their press release, aside from it being the product of a group of people deeply out of touch with reality: they did not cite <strong>any<\/strong> case law at all to back up their absurd claim the bill is somehow &#8220;unconstitutional.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Their release also mentioned Senator Tony Strickland&#8217;s constitutional amendment, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leginfo.ca.gov\/pub\/09-10\/bill\/sen\/sb_0001-0050\/sca_29_bill_20100219_introduced.html\">SCA 29<\/a>, that would block the implementation of the federal bill in California (and would block a single-payer system as well). I&#8217;ll bet voters in SD-19 are wishing they could take the 2008 election back and send Hannah-Beth Jackson to the Senate in Strickland&#8217;s place.<\/p>\n<p>From their US Senate candidates to their gubernatorial candidates to their Senate caucus, California Republicans are apparently determined to make as their 2010 slogan &#8220;We want to deny you health care.&#8221; Good luck with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday we brought you the report that <a href=\"https:\/\/calitics.com\/diary\/11350\/steve-poizner-calls-health-care-reform-unconstitutional-tom-campbell-calls-for-repeal\">four of the five Republican candidates for governor\/US Senate<\/a> are calling the federal health care bill &#8220;unconstitutional&#8221; and\/or want it repealed. So far, Meg Whitman is maintaining a deafening silence, although that might be because nobody in the media has yet asked her about it.<\/p>\n<p>Today we learned that the California State Senate Republican caucus is transforming itself into the Teabag Caucus with a <a href=\"http:\/\/cssrc.us\/news.aspx?id=7768\">their own claims the bill is unconstitutional<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Republican Senators are calling upon California Attorney General Jerry Brown to join other states in challenging the constitutionality of the federal government&#8217;s health-care overhaul. Citing the unprecedented over-reaching of the federal government&#8217;s policy into areas traditionally overseen by states and individuals, the Republican Senators believe the measure is an unfunded federal mandate and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>Senator Tom Harman (R-Huntington Beach) submitted a letter to the Attorney General requesting that California join other states challenging the measure. Harman pointed to the following concerns:<\/p>\n<p> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Expansion of federal authority under the Commerce Clause,<br \/>\n<br \/> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Imposes an unfunded mandate upon economically struggling states, and<br \/>\n<br \/> &nbsp; &nbsp;* Illegally expanding federal authority over state&#8217;s sovereign rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There&#8217;s just one problem with their press release, aside from it being the product of a group of people deeply out of touch with reality: they did not cite <strong>any<\/strong> case law at all to back up their absurd claim the bill is somehow &#8220;unconstitutional.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Their release also mentioned Senator Tony Strickland&#8217;s constitutional amendment, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leginfo.ca.gov\/pub\/09-10\/bill\/sen\/sb_0001-0050\/sca_29_bill_20100219_introduced.html\">SCA 29<\/a>, that would block the implementation of the federal bill in California (and would block a single-payer system as well). I&#8217;ll bet voters in SD-19 are wishing they could take the 2008 election back and send Hannah-Beth Jackson to the Senate in Strickland&#8217;s place.<\/p>\n<p>From their US Senate candidates to their gubernatorial candidates to their Senate caucus, California Republicans are apparently determined to make as their 2010 slogan &#8220;We want to deny you health care.&#8221; Good luck with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-22"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2Xd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}