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The New York Times/ - Politics, Seg, 02 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
President Confident Health Law Will
Stand
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Monday
that he was confident the Supreme Court would
uphold his health care law, saying it would be an
“unprecedented, extraordinary” step to overturn
legislation passed by the “strong majority of a
democratically elected Congress.”
In his first public comments since court questioning last
week suggested that it might find the Affordable Care
Act unconstitutional, Mr. Obama offered both a robust
defense of the law and a barbed warning to justices
thinking of striking it down.
“For years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on
the bench was judicial activism or the lack of judicial
restraint, that an unelected group of people would
somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,”
Mr. Obama said after meeting at the White House with
the leaders of Mexico and Canada.
“Well, there’s a good example,” he continued, “and I’m
pretty confident that this court will recognize that, and
not take that step.”
During three days of Supreme Court hearings on the
case last week, the aggressive tenor of questions from
several justices suggested that the law’s central
provision — the individual mandate — was in jeopardy.
Some justices appeared to be looking for practical
solutions if they invalidated all or parts of the law.
A ruling is expected in June, which would thrust the
health care case into the thick of the presidential
campaign. Mr. Obama, appearing to recognize that the
law could be struck down, extolled its practical benefits
and framed a case that could be used against the
Supreme Court in an election-year debate.
The law’s constitutionality, the president said, had
been affirmed by legal scholars across the political
spectrum, as well as by two conservative appeals court
judges. It was passed by the House, 219 to 212,
largely along party lines.
Mr. Obama said the legislation had brought affordable
health care to 2.5 million young people, easing the
burden on their parents, and had reduced the cost of
prescription drugs for millions of older people.
“This is not an abstract argument,” he said. “People’s
lives are affected by the lack of availability of health
care, the unaffordability of health care, or their inability
to get health care because of preexisting conditions.”
“There is not only an economic element to this and a
legal element to this, but there is a human element to
this,” said the president, who appeared in the Rose
Garden, flanked by President Felipe Calderón of
Mexico and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada.
“I hope that’s not forgotten in the political debate.”
Mr. Obama has not hesitated to challenge the
Supreme Court before. In his State of the Union
address in 2010, with several stone-faced justices
sitting in the audience, he harshly criticized the court’s
decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case,
saying it would “open the floodgates for special
interests — including foreign corporations — to spend
without limit in our elections.”
Mr. Obama’s response on health care overshadowed a
news conference that touched on trade ties between
the United States, Mexico and Canada, and American
efforts to help Mexico combat drug-related violence.
The United States, the president said, needed to help
Mexico both as a good neighbor and out of
self-interest. Rampant drug-related violence south of
the border, he said, could have a “spillover effect” on
Americans living in or visiting Mexico, and could have
“a deteriorating effect overall on the nature of our
relationship.”
Mr. Calderón blamed much of the violence on the
steady flow of guns from the United States to Mexico.
He also disputed that Mexico was alone in its
problems, claiming that the rate of homicides per
hundred thousand inhabitants in Washington is
substantially greater than that of any big Mexican city.
President Obama was in South Korea for a nuclear
security summit when the Supreme Court began
hearing the health care case. But he followed it
closely, administration officials said, reading a
summary of the oral arguments on the flight home and
discussing the case with his White House counsel.
On Monday, Mr. Obama rejected the idea that the
individual mandate could be struck down without
crippling the whole law. “I think the justices should
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