Pro-Obamacare Congressman Pete Stark outraged attendees at a town hall meeting in Hayward California recently when he responded to criticism surrounding the constitutional basis of government run health care by claiming that the federal government had the power to do anything.
An attendee asked Stark to explain his claim that health care was now a right rather than a privilege in light of the fact that government imposed Obamacare “infringes the inalienable rights of other people” under the Constitution. The attendee pointed out that to mandate others to provide a service was a form of slavery and therefore violated the 13th amendment to the Constitution.
If Obamacare was constitutional, added the attendee, then there was no foreseeable limit on what the federal government could do to dictate to Americans how to run their private lives.
Stark responded by claiming the Constitution didn’t stop the federal government from creating “rules” that could affect the private lives of Americans, despite the fact that this is explicitly what the Constitution was created to restrict.
The Constitution, “specifically prohibits slavery and when you tell somebody you have a right to get a service from another that’s essentially saying you get to make that person do something for you and that is a form of slavery,” stated the attendee, adding that if the feds could do this then they could do anything.
“The federal government – yes – can do most anything in this country,” responded Stark, a statement that prompted a loud chorus of dissent from the crowd.
