On February 3rd, the Georgia House Judiciary held a subcommittee hearing on HB707, the Georgia Health Freedom and ACA Noncompliance Act. Representative Jason Spencer, constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein, and another state attorney provided testimony to HB707 to limit the Affordable Care Act.
Representative Spencer stated,
Of significance, the state of Georgia’s assets and resources are currently being subjected to the federal usurpations and these violation of state sovereignty must be pointed out so state assets can be protected from being conscripted for federal use.
These conscription of state resources to implement federal laws and regulations against the sovereign will of the state of Georgia is a direct violation of the US Constitution’s 10th Amendment and a violation of sovereign immunity of this state.
Simply put, the federal government cannot force state and local governments to act against their will. This is known as the anti-commandeering doctrine, and it is well established in constitutional jurisprudence and there are four supreme court decisions dating back to as far as 1842 for this legal doctrine.
Constitional lawyer, Bruce Fein added,
You can imagine as well that it [ACA] clearly impairs the ability of the state to exercise its own sovereign powers when it’s employees who are authorized to execute state law are then distracted by implementing a federal law of which we disagree with.
I believe it is the right of Georgia to refuse to submit to that kind of tax.
The last speaker followed,
“Unlike Georgia, the United States Congress doesn’t have rules around germaneness. So there were a lot of things tact on to the Affordable Care Act that were not germane to health care.
So we developed what would kinda colloquial be called a filter.
The idea is that we didn’t want to have any unintended consequences. Anything that we do we put into HB707 will move forward, will be very intentional. It will be to limit the damage the ACA is causing to our state and local costs.
Georgia’s HB707 still has a long way to go, but this testimony provides much needed insight as to how Obamacare is hurting the state and local governments. Georgia is taking a thoughtful and much need response to stop over-reach from the federal government.
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