An otherwise dry hour-long series of presentations on the federal health-care law ended on a colorful note Monday, as some three dozen tea-party activists, represented by a handful of speakers, took to the podium for an additional hour to present their concerns to Florida senators.
The Florida Senate's Select Committee on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) launched its first meeting Monday, with Chairman Joe Negron, R-Palm City, assuring his fellow legislators and citizen attendees that no votes would be taken that day.
"I've always believed it's good to have a trial first, before a verdict," announced Negron, a lawyer.
What followed Negrons remarks was a series of talks by several experts on the expected fiscal impact of the healthcare law on Floridas taxpayers. The Florida Legislature is expected to decide, during the course of the 2013 legislative session, what Floridas official response will be to the Obamacare bill, in particular, whether the Sunshine State will set up and manage its own state-wide health insurance exchanges or leave it to the federal government.
The seven Republican and four Democratic senators who make up the committee seemed to agree on more than they didnt. None of the questions asked by senators to presenters reflected any intention to resist the healthcare law. Discussion, such as it was, centered on how the law would be complied with: whether the state would expand Medicaid coverage to all citizens living below 138% of the poverty threshold, and whether the state should assume the responsibility of running its own insurance exchanges.
The conservative activists who took to the podium during the meetings second half had another idea in mind: nullification.
Nullification is the states standing up and saying the federal government is not our master: we are, an impassioned KrisAnne Hall, attorney and conservative activist, told the senators, as she concluded a speech that lasted nearly ten minutes. The states and the people are the masters of the Constitution. We do not have to, nor will we, comply with federal dictates not enumerated in the Constitution.
Nullification is the theory not popularly held since the conclusion of the American Civil War that states have authority to invalidate federal laws that they hold to be unconstitutional.
KrisAnne Hall was permitted to speak as long as she did because several other citizens ceded their allotted time to her.
During the course of her remarks in which she cited several Founding Fathers, as well as the stated intention of the U.S. Catholic bishops that their religious schools and charities will not comply with the Obama administrations contraception and abortaficient mandates Democratic senators mostly sneered and gawked, while Republicans seemed indifferent.
Among the speakers who preceded KrisAnne Hall was her husband, Pastor J. Chris Hall, who said he was speaking on behalf of the Baptist Coalition of North Florida.
We believe the principles of Romans 13 make it clear that all should be in subjection to the higher powers, and the federal government is not [currently] in subjection to its higher power in the Constitution; it is therefore operating against the will of God for civil powers, Pastor Hall told the senators. We have a duty as believers not to consent to such violations of Gods divine framework.
After the Halls and a few other speakers urged nullification on the basis of Obamacares alleged unconstitutionality, Senate Minority Leader Chris Smith, who sits on the committee, took the microphone to address their concerns.
Referring to Norman Rockwells painting of a young black girl being escorted to her newly desegregated classroom by federal agents titled, The Problem We All Live With, a copy of which Smith said hangs in his office he said federal intervention was necessary in that instance because Marbury, Madison, and Hamilton wrote in [the] Constitution that I wasnt a man. The federal government had to step in because our Constitution is an imperfect document.
Smith is African-American. His comments were met with gasps and boos from the tea partiers.
Though Smith is, according to his official Senate biography, an attorney, his remarks were historically and legally inaccurate.
William Marbury did not draft the Constitution; he was appointed justice of the peace in the District of Columbia by John Adamsin 1801. The Constitution which was ratified in 1789 also did not deny constitutional personhood to blacks: that was a question left to the states until 1868, by which time the Constitution had been amended (by the addition of the 13th and 14th Amendments) so as to federally codify the personhood and attendant rights to life, liberty, and property of all American citizens, including blacks.
Federal involvement in desegregation was not undertaken because of any perceived defect in the Constitution, but precisely pursuant to the Constitutions 14th Amendment, which guarantees to all Americans whatever their race equal protection under the laws.
Perhaps realizing, belatedly, the incoherence of his comments, Smith met the jeers by insisting that if the Constitution were perfect, it wouldnt ever need amendment. What relevance that observation had to the debate at hand was not clear.
Thats a lie, sir! KrisAnne Hall bellowed after yet another confused remark by Smith about how in the original Constitution, people like [KrisAnne Hall] did not have a right to vote.
Before the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, womens suffrage was allotted on a state-by-state basis; the right was neither affirmed nor denied in the Constitution.
Sunshine State News asked Negron, after he adjourned the committee meeting, whether the radical course of action suggested by the tea partiers nullification was off the table. The senator would not answer the question.
I think whats on the table is what I talked about earlier in the meeting, he replied. We want to make sure that our regulatory burden on Floridians and Florida business is limited. We want to make sure the quality of healthcare is the best it can be in Florida, and that there is choice and competition in the system.
Reach Eric Giunta at egiunta@sunshinestatenews.com or at (954) 235-9116.
