Necessary, Proper Clause and Commerce Clause

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Act on the protection of patients and health care affordable) is a law passed by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on 30 March 2010. It is the main component of the reform of the welfare system in the United States, with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (in) signed the same day. The law can be originally drafted by the Senate as an alternative to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, which can be passed by the House of Representatives two months earlier, on November 7. However, after the death of Senator Edward Kennedy and the conquest of the bench by Republican Scott Brown on January 19, 2010, the Democratic Party had lost its qualified majority, and the House of Representatives decided to approve the Senate version, amend a third bill. This will allow the Senate to pass the amendments by a process of reconciliation by a simple majority. The Patient Protection Act and Affordable Health Care can approved by the Senate on December 24, 2009 by 60 votes in favor and 39 against, and passed to the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, receiving 219 votes in favor and 212 against, the Republican representative voted no on any of the two chambers. At the time of the vote, there were also 4 vacant seats in the House of Representatives (Black, 1103-1105).

Why the Individual Mandate is not a regulation of commerce

One of the most basic rules of constitutional law is that Congress has only limited powers, which can be listed in the Constitution. Congress cannot make any law that the Constitution does not authorize it to make. The Constitution written with limitations on the federal government's reach, and powers can be numerated to prevent the federal government from infringing on individual liberty. The framers did not give Congress authority to do whatever might be wise or desirable, but instead listed its powers and reserved all other powers to the states or to the people at large. Thus, although Congress cannot impede, divest, or interfere with the other branches, it can make laws to structure the executive and judiciary and in other ways to carry into execution the executive and judicial powers. As applied to Congress's own powers, however, the Clause is not a ratchet; instead, it compounds the discretion given to Congress by the other grants of legislative power. Congress can outlaw mail theft, for example, as a means of promoting the postal system. It also can enact a preference for federal tax debts over claims of other creditors as a means of carrying into execution Congress's power to collect taxes, even though establishing priority among creditors is otherwise beyond Congress's power (Miller, 8-11).

The original mandate is a valid exercise of Congress's power pursuant to the Necessary and Proper clause

Finally, there is the sweeping “Necessary and Proper” clause, which Justice Scalia has described ...