To his credit, Gov. Rick Perry is pressing forward in “the ongoing struggle against the Obama Administration’s continued pattern of massive federal overreach and consolidation of power, as well as the resulting erosion of individual liberties.”
The U.S. Congress may have passed and the U.S. Supreme Court may have upheld the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), but a growing number of the 50 states of the union don’t want to implement this law.
As the Tenth Amendment affirms, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Nowhere does the Constitution authorize the federal government to provide health insurance or compel American citizens to purchase it.
Gov. Perry joins an expanding list of governors who are refusing to establish the “state exchange” Obamacare requires.
In a letter delivered to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius following the Supreme Court’s decision, Perry proclaimed: “I will not be party to socializing healthcare or bankrupting my state in direct contradiction to our Constitution and our founding principles of limited government.”
In a second letter delivered to Sebelius last week, Perry reaffirmed his refusal, emphasizing that “the exchange presents an unknown cost to Texas taxpayers. It would not be fiscally responsible,” he observed, “to put hard-working Texans on the financial hook for an unknown amount of money to operate a system under rules that have not even been written.”
We applaud Gov. Perry’s firm resistance to “federal overreach” and his unbending support for our nation’s governing document.
The Constitution protects our freedom, but we must protect the Constitution: against presidents, legislators, and judges who distort the clear, original intent of our Founding Fathers.
It’s in the nature of government to enlarge itself, and to infringe upon our freedoms as it expands. Our national government has grown far beyond its proper limits. Instead of ceding more freedom, we should strive to reclaim what we’ve lost.