Marco Rubio is engaging in the long known practice of politicians who are trying to appeal to their party’s base by engaging in meaningless actions:
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Tuesday introduced a constitutional amendment aimed at invalidating the individual mandate to buy health insurance under Obamacare.
The text of the “Right To Refuse” amendment, according to Rubio’s office: “Congress shall make no law that imposes a tax on a failure to purchase goods or services.”
“ObamaCare is a disastrous policy that is not only destructive to job creation, it will also unleash the corrupt and scandal-ridden IRS on taxpayers simply for not buying health insurance,” Rubio said in a statement.
He invoked the Internal Revenue Scandal two more times in his press release, timed as Congress was set to hold another hearing into its improper targeting of conservative groups.
“We should put our faith in the American people to decide what goods and services they want to buy, not have Congress dictate it and have the IRS empowered to harass Americans to make sure they do it,” he said. “Let’s do everything we can to keep the IRS out of our health care and stop future congresses from forcing private citizens to spend their hard-earned money on products or services Washington is forcing on them.”
Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) has introduced companion legislation in the House.
There is, of course, no chance whatsoever that this Amendment would get the required 2/3 vote in the House and Senate necessary to the state, not to mention that it’s even less likely to get the support of 3/4 of the states if it somehow managed to pass that hurdle. However, this has nothing to do with proposing something that has any realistic chance of being successfully enacted. Instead, it’s a reflection of the fact that Rubio has been taking significant hits from the right over his support for the Senate’s immigration bill. This, quite obviously, is an effort on his part to rekindle his relationship with the right wing of his party in anticipation of a potential 2016 Presidential run. Of course, it would be nice if members of the party that claims to respect the Constitution didn’t feel free to cynically exploit it for political purposes in this manner.
