News

Interview with Dennis Miller
Senator Marco Rubio
March 28, 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmGDNpjapoo

Dennis Miller: “I thought the solicitor for the President’s case up there at the Supreme Court was shakier than Crispin Glover on the Letterman Show. What did you make of the first day? They came out of the box rocky, didn’t they?”

Senator Marco Rubio: “I hope they keep sending him. Look, I think he has got a tough case to make no matter what. The reality of it is that this is an indefensible law from a constitutional perspective. I am not claiming that I can read the tea leaves in terms of how these folks are going to end up. I think people who have done that in the past have ended up being wrong, but I do think that the issues that were raised yesterday were exactly the ones that I think are going to be most troubling for the Obama Administration. That is that this is a dramatic overreach by the federal government to create a national law particularly mandating people to buy something. That I think ultimately is going to fail the constitutional test.”

Miller: “It just ain’t America. I agree the reason the cat stammered a little is that you are trying to sell stuff that just doesn’t wash as far as America’s been. Maybe the Supremes are at the point they want to change the way America has been.  It seems like they’ll do that periodically, every eon or so. But it just isn’t America to say you’ve got to get health insurance. I don’t care how they put it, and I think that’s why the guy had trouble selling it.  He knew it wouldn’t wash.”

Rubio: “What happens, at the Supreme Court especially, is that these are very intelligent individuals, and what happens at the Supreme Court is you take the arguments that are made in favor of the law, basically, arguing that the law is a good idea and saying why the federal government has the power to do it. And then you take the justification for it and expand it out and it leads to ridiculous results. I think Scalia raised one about food being a necessity. ‘Could they make you buy broccoli?’ You saw other people raise other concerns along the same route. I saw one question from someone saying, ‘Are they forcing the creation of a certain commerce so they can regulate it?’

“Look, I think the law is a bad idea on a public policy front.  That’s the realm that I argue in most of the time. Just court watching the last couple of days, I think it’s pretty clear the court has this as an issue it thinks it can tackle, and at least it seems after yesterday, an issue that the majority of them feel is outside the powers the Constitution gives the federal government. And by the way this is a great reminder of something and that is: the only power the federal government has is the power it has been given. There’s another view in the world, of course, unless the powers are denied, you know they have it. That’s not how the Constitution reads. The Constitution is very clear: the only power the federal government has is the power that the Constitution gives them. This just isn’t one of them.”