Speaker-to-be John Boehner filed an amicus brief on Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of the health care overhaul law’s individual mandate.
Boehner filed the brief in support of a lawsuit brought by 20 state attorneys general and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the largest small-business association in the country.
“ObamaCare is a job-killer, and our economy simply cannot afford this unprecedented, unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.” he said. “That is why Republicans will continue standing with the American people and fighting to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with better solutions put forth in the Pledge to America to lower health care costs and protect American jobs.”
Boehner’s brief comes about a week after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a “Dear Colleague” letter asking for support in a brief of his own.
“For the first time, the Congress is not regulating an economic activity in which its citizens have chosen to engage, but rather is mandating that its citizens engage in economic activity -- that they purchase a particular product -- to begin with, and it would allow the federal government to punish those who make a different choice,” McConnell wrote.
If the individual mandate is upheld, he said, "there will no longer be any meaningful limit on Congress’s power to regulate its citizens under the Commerce Clause.”
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