Thursday, October 14, 2010
The Tea Party Goes International
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/10/14/the-tea-party-goes-international/
The Tea Party Goes International |  |
The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.
October 14, 2010 4:00:08 PM
Despite the media's negative portrayal, support for the Tea Party is growing at astonishing speed. Over half of the electorate now consider themselves favorable to the Tea Party, according to recent polls. Just this weekend, the Virginia Tea Party Convention, co-hosted by The Heritage Foundation, attracted over 2,000 attendees – the largest state-wide rally to date. Such broad support is remarkable for a movement that began not quite two years ago in scattered local gatherings of frustrated and concerned citizens. Yet when considering the Tea Party's grounding in the principles of limited government, individual freedom and the rule of law, it is unsurprising that their message resonates across the country – and as we're beginning to see – around the world.
Australia is one such country experiencing a groundswell of support for a more fiscally conservative government. The election of Tony Abbott in December as opposition leader against the Labor Party precipitated a "savage swing" toward conservatism. Although Abbott's Liberal Party [Australia's traditionally conservative party] was unable to win an outright majority this August, they did gain enough power to deny the Labor Party a governing majority. Throughout this period, Mr. Abbott has continued to explain–without ambiguities—his conservative stance on the economy, stimulus spending, faith, and cap-and-trade legislation, giving Australian politics a clarity and focus that many countries would desire.
Australia's conservative shift is evident in the creation of its very own T.E.A. [Taxed Enough Already] Party. The Australian T.E.A. Party states that it is a "worldwide movement united for free markets, fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited small governments and individual freedom". Rather than become another political party, the T.E.A. Party seeks to influence existing parties and work within the established system to catalyze economic and structural reforms. Such tactics should not be underestimated. As Henry Olsen notes in his latest Weekly Standard article, fiscal conservatism has dominated six of the last eight elections in the developed world. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden—yes Sweden!—and the Netherlands (among others) have all taken steps toward the stated goals of the Australian and American Tea Parties by voting for tax cuts over expanded welfare—an unprecedented shift in these established welfare states. Even Great Britain's government demanded that government department cut their budgets by 25% – prompting references to a new British Tea Party.
The principles that precipitated the first Tea Party – a respect for the rule of law, and desire for limited government and individual liberty – are universal; and they are just as threatened now as they were at the time of the American founding. This time, however, the United States is not alone in coming to their defense.
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American Leadership First Principles Austalia Australian T.E.A. Party tea party Virginia Tea Party Convention
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The States to Speaker Pelosi: They’re Serious
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/10/14/the-states-to-speaker-pelosi-they%e2%80%99re-serious/
The States to Speaker Pelosi: They're Serious | |
The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.
October 14, 2010 4:18:28 PM
When Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked by a reporter "where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate," she responded, "Are you serious? Are you serious?"
Today comes an answer from Florida, 19 other states, and the National Federation of Independent Businesses: they are very serious. Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson today rejected the Obama administration's invitation to throw their case out, allowing the constitutional challenge to proceed.
The 65-page decision is reasoned and methodical. To give but a taste, the judge spends no less than 22 pages assessing whether the penalty assessed for failing to comply with the individual mandate is a tax or a penalty. This seemingly arcane issue is important because, despite President Obama and Congress's claims throughout that the penalty is not a tax increase, the Justice Department has argued in Court that it is, in fact, a tax, in order to rely upon Congress's taxing powers as an answer to the question that we began with, namely "where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate."
The federal government's change in position on this issue earned a strong rebuke from Judge Vinson, who used the Justice Department's own arguments about congressional accountability against them:
[I]t is obvious that Congress did not pass the penalty, in the version of the legislation that is now "the Act," as a tax under its taxing authority, but rather as a penalty pursuant to its Commerce Clause power. . . . And, now that it has passed into law on that basis, government attorneys have come into this court and argued that it was a tax after all. This rather significant shift in position, if permitted, could have the consequence of allowing Congress to avoid the very same accountability that was identified by the government's counsel in the Virginia case as a check on Congress's broad taxing power in the first place. . . . .
Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an "Alice-in-Wonderland" tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check.
Opinion at 27-28 (internal citations and footnotes omitted).
With the Alice-in-Wonderland taxing argument taken away, the government is left with only one constitutional rationalization for the mandate: that forcing individuals who are not engaging in commerce regarding insurance contracts to enter into contracts for insurance with private, third-part insurers is somehow a regulation of interstate commerce. The government argued that this use of congressional authority was nothing unusual, and that the case should be dismissed. The Court disagreed, finding the question of whether to allow the claim "not even a close call." The Judge found that "[t]he power that the individual mandate seeks to harness is simply without prior precedent"—contrary to the government's "nothing to see here" argument. Demonstrating the breadth of the regulatory scheme, the Court noted:
The individual mandate applies across the board. People have no choice and there is no way to avoid it. Those who fall under the individual mandate either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive.
The decision is yet another loss for the Obama administration, which now will have to defend the mandate at a hearing on December 16. And with these mounting losses, the answer to Speaker Pelosi's question is getting stronger, and clearer.
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