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Comment by abecedarius | Hacker News Reader

Has a legislator ever paid much of a political cost for passing unconstitutional legislation? It must have happened, but I'm not aware myself of any serious pain for any of them.

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One example I recall from the 90s is where Congress passed a law giving the President line-item veto power over the budget (meaning the president was free to strike down any parts of it he saw fit), which was something the Clinton Whitehouse sought.

That power was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and overturned.

I don't recall anyone paying any kind of price for that even though it was a complete abdication of Congress' authority.

That's a somewhat inaccurate summary. Reagan had also explicitly asked for it, and the 1996 bill was introduced and mostly supported by the Republicans, who you may recall had a Congressional majority at the time. Senator Bob Dole, who introduced the bill, was the GOP candidate for president in the same year, and one has to wonder if its introduction was partially aimed at burnishing his credentials as an opponent of pork-barrel politics. There were two attempts to bring it back in 2006, both sponsored by prominent Republicans.

Any president would like more authority over the budget, but the GOP does seem to have invested the most political capital in it. The general public seems fairly indifferent to the niceties of constitutional law so I'm not surprised the proponents haven't suffered any major electoral rebukes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_St...

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_c...

There are dozens of Democrats who voted for the unconstitutional individual mandate in ObamaCare who lost their seats last cycle.

That's rather speculative. The Democrats in question lost their seats because of voter grief after an enormous marketing effort against them. It had nothing to do with the Constitutionality of Obamacare, and unless you're a Constitutional expert, you really have no leg to stand on in making such claims.

I'd actually disagree. The constitution explicitly enumerates the powers of the federal government. Many (most?) modern federal programs, departments, and laws aren't _explicitly_ listed. The government has gotten around this limitation by claiming that the constitution grants the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce, which can be interpreted as narrowly or widely as you like. Up till now, the courts have allowed this wider interpretation.

I think it's every citizen's right - even duty - to be questioning these things rather than leaving it to some "Constitutional expert".

I'd encourage the original poster to drop the loaded term "ObamaCare" and instead explain why he believes the health care bill is not allowed under the interstate commerce clause. In my opinion, it isn't a very difficult thing to argue.

If congress is constitutionally allowed to tax then the individual mandate is constitutional. Imagine a law where they would raise your taxes and give you a health insurance policy, it would be effectively the same as a mandate.

I should have been clearer.

Every American has the right to question whether or not a law is constitutional. However, without expertise in constitutional law and elections, it is speculative to make claims that senators were ousted because voters believed a law to be unconstitutional.

6 senators is not "dozens" and the individual mandate has not been ruled unconstitutional.

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