In the Atlanta ruling, Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull found in a 207-page opinion that lawmakers cannot require people to "enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die."
In a lengthy dissent, Circuit Judge Stanley Marcus accused the majority of ignoring the "undeniable fact that Congress' commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries." He wrote that Congress generally has the constitutional authority to create rules regulating large areas of the national economy.
Dubina was tapped by former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, while Hull and Marcus were picks of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
The White House argued the legislative branch was using a "quintessential" power - its constitutional ability to regulate interstate commerce, including the health care industry - when it passed the overhaul law.
Stock trading on Wall Street, the Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit Court announced that the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional. Obamacare’s individual mandate required individuals to purchase health care insurance or face a penalty. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), an official candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, cheered the news on Obamacare.
On Friday, the stock market ended a wild week of trading with gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 125 points or 1.1 percent and the NASDAQ closed up 15 points or .61 percent. The S&P also finished the week up, gaining 6 points or .53 percent. The stock market experienced extreme highs and lows throughout the week.
On Monday, the stock market responded to Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the US’s credit rating from AAA to AA+. The DJIA lost 635 points on Monday and the S&P and NASDAQ didn’t fare well either. According to The New York Times, the stock market sunk to levels not seen since the worst of the recession.
According to The Daily Nonpareil, Bachmann connected Monday’s stock market plunge to the debt ceiling increase during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “The markets said, ‘We don’t think it’s a good idea,’” Bachmann said. The Minnesota Congresswoman also added that “you can’t fool the markets.”
Standard & Poor’s singled out the debt ceiling talks as one of the primary reasons that the company decided to lower the US’s triple A credit rating. “More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, US policymakers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures,” S&P’s credit analyst Nikola Swann said.
On Friday, Bachmann named Obamacare as another factor that contributed to Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the US’s credit rating. “Removing the individual mandate from Obamacare deprives it of the revenue necessary to pay for the bill. Implementing the remaining provisions without the mandate would dramatically increase our budget deficit and do further harm to our economy and further imperil The United States credit rating,” Bachmann said.
At the conclusion of her statement on Obamacare and the Appeals Court ruling, Bachmann slammed President Obama for pushing Obamacare. “It is time for the President to admit now what the courts have affirmed, that the law is unconstitutional, and withdraw it so we can put our country back on the path to economic prosperity,” Bachmann argued.
As the stock market’s volatility underscored the need for a solution to the country’s debt crisis, Congressional leaders scrambled throughout the week to put together a debt committee. The debt committee is part of the debt ceiling plan and has the responsibility of identifying ways to cut an additional $1.5 trillion from the federal budget.
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