Update on Attorney General Lawsuit

Rob McKenna, Attorney General, R-WA

It has now been a month since a number of attorney generals came together to file a lawsuit against the constitutionality of the health care bill. I was reading an exchange between a writer of the Seattle alternative paper The Stranger and the communications director of Rob McKenna, the AG of Washington, and it gave a little insight into what the official intent of the lawsuit is.

According to Janelle Guthrie (communications director), the intent of the bill is to not overturn the health care bill. Instead, she says that the suit only wants to overturn two pieces:

As this state’s independently elected attorney general, McKenna takes his duty to defend Washington's constitutional rights very seriously. Health care reform is much too important to build on an unconstitutional foundation.

The two main provisions of the lawsuit he joined deal with:

1) The unprecedented and unconstitutional requirement that individuals lacking health insurance must purchase private insurance or face a fine; and

2) The massive expansion of the Medicaid program which will unconstitutionally require states to eventually spend billions more on this program at a time when state budgets are already in crisis.

She says that these two pieces can be taken out without compromising the nature of reform, and that this action is to support the bill.

Really? I'm having a hard time believing that. The Republican attorney generals all reacted immediately after the bill was signed to try and undermine it. These are two of the major components of the bill, and to say that you want to remove them just to make sure the bill succeeds is ludicrous. They can paint this however they want, but the fact of the matter is that this is an attempt to unofficially overturn legislation by undermining its strength.