By Peter J. Smith
RICHMOND, Virginia, January 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The incoming Attorney General of Virginia says he would join other U.S. attorneys general in fighting the federal government from imposing the Democrats' health care reform on their states, according to an interview with WorldNetDaily.
Ken Cuccinelli, a pro-life Republican who assumed office this weekend told WND’s Anita Crane that the health-care reform bill under consideration by Congress mandates individuals purchase health insurance and that “violates individual rights.”
"I do not believe the federal government has the legal authority in the [U.S.] Constitution to mandate that individual Americans purchase health insurance,” Cuccinelli told Crane.
In fact, CNSNews.com has reported that the Congressional Budget Office back in 1994 noted that the federal government had “never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.” Forcing individuals to buy health-insurance “would be an unprecedented form of federal action,” it stated.
Sen. Orrin Hatch put it in plainer terms, telling CNS that if the current version of health-care reform can be justified under the Constitution, “then there is literally nothing the federal government can’t force us to do.”
Cuccinelli also said that he does not believe that the federal government has the legal authority to shanghai all 50 states into the federal bureaucracy by requiring them (in the Senate version) “to set up healthcare exchanges to facilitate individual mandates.”
The new attorney general follows in the steps of his predecessor Bill Mims, who joined with 12 other Republican state attorneys general threatening to bring a constitutional challenge against the health care bill over a provision that exempts Nebraska from having to shoulder its burden of Medicaid increases. The provision was later dropped in order to avoid litigation, but was originally part of a deal to rope in Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) as the crucial 60th vote for health care reform to pass in the Senate. GOP Senators excoriated the deal, calling it the “Cornhusker Kickback,” and the latest in a series of vote bribes to pass health-care reform.
Cuccinelli says he strongly believes in the plain intent of the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which stated that the powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government by the Constitution remained with the states and the people.
He told WND that his office will decline to defend any statute that violates the Virginia or federal Constitutions. Instead, Cuccinelli is looking forward to a bill submitted to the Virginia General Assembly by Delegate Bob Marshall that would prevent “unconstitutional” aspects of the health care reform from being imposed on Virginians.
The Marshall bill makes its intent clear stating: "No law shall restrict a person's natural right and power of contract to secure the blessings of liberty to choose private health care systems or private plans.”
Read the rest of Anita Crane’s interview with Ken Cuccinelli at WorldNetDaily.com.