Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate health committee, released the following statement on today’s Supreme Court oral arguments in the King v. Burwell case, which Alexander attended:
“Hopefully the Supreme Court will rule that the law means what it says. If the court does, states will have two options for the 6 million Americans who today receive tax credit subsidies. First, states without exchanges can still create them, but Republicans in Congress will provide a better option. We will act to provide financial assistance those Americans hurt by this as well as offer states more flexibility in offering lower cost insurance policies to their citizens.”
On Monday, Alexander, along with U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah (chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) and John Barrasso of Wyoming (chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee) published an op-ed in the Washington Post about what Congress should do if the Court decides against the president in this case.
Rep. Scott DesJarlais said, “This ruling will not only decide the fate of the president’s health care law, it will determine whether our nation continues to operate under three co-equal branches of government. It is clear the IRS violated our Constitution’s separation of powers by re-writing a major portion of the Affordable Care Act – an action reserved exclusively for Congress.
“Our founders established a system of checks and balances in order to prevent a concentration of power and the creation of a monarchy. Allowing the Obama administration to operate as both the executive and legislative branch gives the president an unprecedented amount of power and threatens the very foundation of our democracy. If the president wanted to change the language of his health care law, he should have asked Congress to undertake that task. Instead the president chose to accomplish his goal by bypassing both the House and Senate – a clear violation of the Constitution.
“I hope the justices will rule accordingly by striking down this flagrant power grab by the Obama administration. Regardless of how one feels about ObamaCare, surely we can all agree that we must preserve our Constitution’s separation of powers.”