JONATHAN CHAIT FEBRUARY 2, 2011
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National Review's Iain Murray argues, "Now that the individual mandate has been found unconstitutional, some on the left are starting to claim it was a conservative idea originally." (Actually, some on the left have been pointing this out for a couple years, but never mind.) Nonsense, writes Murray, citing this 1994 paper from the Cato Institute:
It’s worth noting, though, that most of us in the free market movement have never embraced the health insurance purchase mandate. And I’m proud to dig out of the archives an old Cato Institute paper (pdf) written by my former CEI colleague Tom Miller(now at the American Enterprise Institute), which roundly criticizes the 1993-94 Republican compromise legislation. Tom found a lot of faults in those bills, and he singled out the individual purchase mandate as being especially egregious. While acknowledging that, from a political perspective, “any legislative alternative to the Clinton plan must guarantee universal coverage,” he wrote:
"The most troubling aspect of the Nickles-Stearns legislation, as introduced on November 20 [1993], is the mandate that it imposes on all Americans to purchase a standard package of health insurance benefits. By endorsing the concept of compulsory universal insurance coverage, Nickles-Stearns undermines the traditional principles of personal liberty and individual responsibility that provide essential bulwarks against all-intrusive governmental control of health care."
Wait. He's citing a paper criticizing the Republican health care plan, co-sponsored by arch-conservative Don Nickles, for including an individual mandate. Murray seems to think this refutes the fact that Republicans used to support the individual mandate.
Now, clearly, there were some fringe elements on the right who opposed an individual mandate (though not until until the entire GOP had abandoned the idea for political reasons did any of them think to argue it was actually unconstitutional .) The point is that Republicans, even very conservative Republicans, both created and supported the individual mandate for years before deciding en masse it was not only undesirable but an affront to liberty and the Constitution.
6 comments
Agreed that this shows the disingenuousness of most oppossition to the individual mandate on Constitutional grounds. And yet, the fact that Republicans supported the idea in the past has no bearing on its actual Constitutionality. Personally, I think it falls well to the Constitutional side of the more recent Rehnquist decisions over-turning laws as going beyond the bounds of the Commerce Clause. And I always hate hearing this Broccoli analogy; perhaps the government can force us to buy broccoli, but they cannot make you eat it. Just as no one can force an insured person to use that insurance, every day there are people who carry car insurance & yet pay for accidents with cash, so far as I know that isn't a crime.
- markentel
February 2, 2011 at 4:25pm
They were for it before they were against it before they were for it before they were against it!
- Nusholtz
February 2, 2011 at 4:39pm
I think the way some of these people prove that no conservative supported x policy is by defining a "real conservative" as someone who does not support x policy. That way they are never wrong. You might think Don Nickles is an arch-conservative, but by supporting the individual mandate, he has revealed that he really isn't a conservative at all. Apply that to all Republicans, and then you can say that no conservative supports an individual mandate.
- tysonsahib
February 2, 2011 at 4:46pm
Ah, TysonSahib has penetrated to the center of the Orwellian logic being used. By defining the "free market movement", Murray can truthfully point to the paper that criticises the "compromise" legislation. And by doing this, hide the sleight-of-hand that actually leaves SILENT if the idea was or was not "a conservative idea originally". Then, by equating the "free market" movement with "conservative", strongly imply that most conservatives were against it -- without actually SAYING that. Thus a flip-flop occurs without obviously being a flip-flop. Frankly, I think conservatives would LOVE an individual mandate, that's a license to print money. It's the cost controls ON that mandate they hate. But they can't say that.
- AllanL5
February 2, 2011 at 5:36pm
I like the assumption here: because CATO published a paper that opposed the individual mandate, therefore conservatives were in general opposed to such a mandate, and that this datum overrides the fact that former conservative legislators in Congress actually supported such a mandate. Unintentionally hilarious.
- liberalref
February 2, 2011 at 6:07pm
I often hear the old saw about "never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity." Normally I dismiss it as the kind of lie the malicious people want you to believe. In this case, though, is it possible that Murray is just too stoopid to realize that he mistakenly refuted the point he was trying to make?
- cspencef
February 2, 2011 at 9:29pm