Texas Conservative Coalition Stopping Health Care Reform at the Border

So with the passage of HR 3490, the Health Care for All Act, all Americans will eventually gain health care insurance. All Americans will never have to fear coming down with such a bad ailment that their insurance companies will rescind their coverage. All Americans will never again have to stay in a job that they hate because moving to another job means moving your health care coverage, and your present conditions become pre-existing conditions.

All of that and much, much more.

But according to what I am reading here, the Texas Conservative Coalition is promising to stop health care reform right at the Texas border.

With a bold cry of “Nevah!” and “Come and take it,” the TCC promises that health care reform is something that Texans will never have because . . . well . . . because they are going to vote against it.

In Texas.

No I’m not kidding. They really think that they can do that:

“Following the passage of H.R. 3590, "The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act", by the U.S. House of Representatives, members of the Texas Conservative Coalition (TCC) announced plans to file legislation to reject the overreaching bill due to its impact and costs to the state and to Texans. “

“State Representative Wayne Christian (R-Center), President of the Texas Conservative Coalition, announced his plan to file legislation to prohibit the implementation of the overarching federal healthcare overhaul in Texas: ‘When the Legislature convenes in January of 2011, the members of the Texas Conservative Coalition will stand together to reject the federal takeover of health care.’”

Apparently these clowns never heard about the Supremacy Clause. Here it is, I’ll quote from the US Constitution Article VI Clause 2:

“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”

See? State government can’t simply veto the supreme law of the land, Tenth Amendment notwithstanding.

What a bunch of losers. Bitter, sour grapes losers.

Were it the case that the Texas legislature could just cherry pick which federal law they want to follow, and which one they will leave out, history would surely be different.

For example, if Texas simply decided not to follow the rules set forth in the Voting Rights Act, people would still be paying poll taxes and Texas would be a Democratic state because conservatives would have had no reason to leave the Democratic Party to become members of the party of the Great Emancipator, Abe Lincoln.

For example, if Texas simply decided not to follow the rules set forth in the Sixteenth Amendment, no one in Texas would have to pay their federal income taxes because it could be viewed as an “overreaching bill” with unholy “impact and costs to the state and to Texans.”

Notice that they say “overreaching bill” and not “overreaching law?”

They dismiss the law of the land just as they dismiss the fact that Barack Obama, a native citizen of the United States, is President of the United States.

Now it is one thing to claim that the bill is unconstitutional. This isn’t very likely because the Constitution gives congress broad powers over interstate commerce, and health insurance, last time I looked, came under the heading of commerce. But that is the only possible action the TCC can make. They can join in AG Abbott’s ill-advised and laughable effort to get the law declared unconstitutional.

But what you can’t do is you can’t Just Say No. If the law of the land is unconstitutional, that’s one thing. But constitutional or no, it is the supreme law of the land.

All of it.