Health-care challenge promoted, panned

DES MOINES – Republican lawmakers and gubernatorial candidates Monday supported legal challenges to a federally approved health-care overhaul but legal scholars gave the strategy long odds of success.

Mark Kende, a Drake University law school professor who directors the school's constitutional law center, said attempts to challenge the federal health-care reform as violating federal commerce clause or the 10

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Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are probably “losers.”

Kende said he based that assessment on U.S. Supreme Court precedents, although he noted there was no 100 percent certainty on how the current or future court could rule. He did note that a civil war was fought last century over an attempt by states to ignore a federal action.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller came to a similar conclusion, saying his review convinced him that the federal government does have the power to make the changes covered under the massive health-care overhaul that Congress passed Sunday and President Obama is expected to sign as early as Tuesday.

“We won't be suing the federal government,” Miller said in an interview.

However, Rep. Rod Roberts, a five-term Republican from Carroll who's running for governor this year, said he is seeking to amendment two bills pending in the House with language that could make it possible to challenge the constitutionality of President Obama's health-care plan.

Roberts said his amendment would prohibit federal laws that require Iowans to purchase particular health care plans or that restrict Iowans' ability to choose their own health care plan.

“If President Obama and Democrats in Washington, D.C., force health care decisions upon Iowans, I will stand up for the people of Iowa and defend our state's sovereignty,” he said. “I have a plan to defend Iowans' constitutional rights.”

Roberts also said that if he were elected governor in November and sworn in next January, that he would file a lawsuit in federal court against President Obama's “power grab” to have the plan struck down as a violation of Iowans' 10th Amendment rights – which says that powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states.

Roberts' strategy is contingent on seven members of the House's 56-member majority would join him in supporting his amendment – a development that's not likely but could generate an interesting debate.

Bob Vander Plaats, a Sioux City Republican also vying for the 2010 GOP nomination, characterized Roberts as a late arrival to the issue since he announced last Thursday that he would preserve Iowans' rights to opt out of a federal government-run health care system.

Vander Plaats said he would invoke the state's 10

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Amendment rights to defend Iowans from “socialized health care” if Congress approves “Obamacare.” He said his action would protect Iowans from new federal mandates.

Roberts shrugged off Vander Plaats' remarks by saying maybe he was first to fire off a press release but the sitting representative was taking action rather than just talking.

“There's a world of difference between those two realities,” Roberts said. “I'm just glad that I'm in a position to actually demonstrate leadership and take action and not just talk about it.”

Meanwhile Monday, former Gov. Terry Branstad, the third Republican seeking his party's 2010 gubernatorial nomination, called the health-care plan and ill-timed trillion dollar federal spending measure the country could ill afford.

 “The so-called funding for the package is more tax increases, massive cuts in Medicare for our elderly and unfunded mandates for states already struggling under huge Medicaid burdens,” he said.

“Given the massive scope and effect of this bill, it is likely that various provisions will be challenged in the courts. Those challenges are both timely and appropriate,” Branstad said.

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