This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 18, 2011 - WASHINGTON - Making her contribution to the U.S. House's attack on last year's health-care overhaul, U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, successfully added an amendment Friday to bar the Internal Revenue Service from taking initial steps to implement the "individual mandate" requiring everyone to have health insurance.
"No American should be forced to purchase health insurance they neither want nor can afford," Emerson argued during the debate on her proposal, which was approved by a mostly party line vote of 246-182. She said the individual mandate "compels Americans to give up their freedom, surrender their choices and part with their hard-earned money to support a system of health care designed by and run by the federal government through a maze of boards, committees and bureaucrats."
Emerson's measure was one of dozens of amendments tacked onto the stopgap budget bill -- called the "continuing resolution" -- that would apply only to this year's federal funding. The health law's individual mandate would not go into effect until 2014. But Emerson said the government intends to hire more than a thousand IRS enforcement agents, starting next year, and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to enact provisions of the health-care law.
In other health-related votes Friday, the Republican-controlled House also approved amendments to block all federal funding for the health law; ban the health and labor departments from spending funds to implement the law; and stop funding family planning grants.
Emerson, who chairs a House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over funding for the Treasury Department and the IRS, limited her amendment to barring the IRS from hiring more agents or spending funds to implement or enforce the law, which will require the IRS to verify that taxpayers buy health insurance and also to impose penalties if they violate the law and do not.
During the debate, Emerson said, "My own state of Missouri passed a ballot initiative last August by a vote of 71 percent not to enforce the individual mandate. This is the bright-light example of what's wrong with the health-care law."
Democrats argued that the insurance mandate is the keystone to the health-care overhaul, creating a big enough pool of insured to allow health insurers to cover persons with pre-existing medical conditions. So far, two federal districts courts have ruled that the mandate is constitutional and two others have ruled it violates the constitution. "It has already been found unconstitutional, and this Congress will make a major priority of the effort to stop the IRS from enforcing it," Emerson said.
The amendment-studded House spending bill will face significant hurdles in the Democratic-controlled Senate. And President Barack Obama has said he "strongly opposes" a spending bill with so many provisos aimed at the health-care overhaul.