Politics

Jan Schakowsky explains how totally constitutional the health-care mandate is

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Just kidding. When confronted by a cameraman from Founding Bloggers asking about the mandate’s constitutionality, Schakowsky was pulled away from the conversation by a staffer, but not without giving it the ol’ college try.

She countered with the notion that the Constitution does not have a provision for interstate road construction, but her questioner reminds her of the part about “post roads.” She then suggested that, according to the interrogator’s logic, civil rights legislation would have been unconstitutional, even though civil rights legislation was crafted to ensure the equal treatment the Constitution and its amendments had already guaranteed. Finally, she says that Medicare and Social Security both create a precedent for the health-care mandate, but neither of those programs requires a citizen to buy a product from a private company as a condition of being alive. Her Constitutional knowledge exhausted, Schakowsky is pulled away from the camera by a staffer.

“I’m outta here,” she says with a smile as the short video ends. The video was taken at a forum Sunday for Schackowsky and her Republican opponent Joel Pollak, held by the League of Women Voters for citizens of Illinois’ 9th District. The two camps’ and opening statements and post-debate press releases are here.