President Obama’s preemptive criticism last week of the Supreme Court as it considers the constitutionality of his health care continues to face scrutiny. In a post Monday on its fact-checking blog, The Washington Post examines the arguments Obama made and finds them particularly misleading. The piece points out, “It’s clear that Obama’s ‘unprecedented’ comment was dead wrong, because the Supreme Court’s very purpose is to review laws that are passed by the nation’s democratically elected Congress — regardless of how popular or well-intentioned those laws may be.” Further, “Congress didn’t pass the Affordable Care Act with a strong majority.

The vote in the House of Representatives, for instance, was 219 to 212, with no Republicans supporting and 34 Democrats opposing the measure.” Also, The Post adds, “It’s worth noting that the White House keeps changing its tune on how the public should interpret Obama’s comments. On Friday, a spokesman told us the president was referring to ‘major economic legislation.’ So now we’ve gone from altogether ‘unprecedented,’ to ‘economic issues’ to just ‘major economic legislation.’”

After discussing some of the Supreme Court precedent and legal history, the fact-checking article concludes, “First of all, the president has a rather distorted view of what constitutes a ‘strong majority’ if he thinks the Affordable Care Act vote makes the cut. Not only was the victory achieved by a margin of just a few votes in the House, but the supporters were from only one political party—his own. Second, Obama’s remarks implied that the Supreme Court would be acting in extreme fashion by overturning the health-care law. That isn’t necessarily true. Some would say that invalidating an economic regulation isn’t extraordinary at all. . . . On balance, the president earns two Pinocchios—which means creating ‘a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people’—for his comments about the pending Supreme Court decision.”

Comments

comments