The constitutionality of government health care mandates has not been focused on nearly enough. When questioned about where Congress gets this unprecedented power to force the citizens to purchase something heavily regulated by the federal government, proponents of Obamacare really cannot answer the question.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was asked the question of where specifically the Constitution authorizes Congress to mandate that individuals buy health insurance, she replied, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” Her inability to give any kind of answer shows how little respect for constitutional restraints on power the political left has.

White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs actually claimed there was no “veracity” to the argument that the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government to force individuals to buy health insurance.

A Washington Post article by two former Justice Department lawyers, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, argue that the “individual mandate” is unconstitutional, and does not fall under the regulation of interstate commerce. “The otherwise uninsured would be required to buy coverage, not because they were even tangentially engaged in the “production, distribution or consumption of commodities,” but for no other reason than that people without health insurance exist. The federal government does not have the power to regulate Americans simply because they are there.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Rivkin and Casey explain the problems with the argument that the individual mandate is based on an “excise tax” instead of regulation. “Taxation can favor one industry or course of action over another, but a “tax” that falls exclusively on anyone who is uninsured is a penalty beyond Congress’s authority. If the rule were otherwise, Congress could evade all constitutional limits by “taxing” anyone who doesn’t follow an order of any kind-whether to obtain health-care insurance, or to join a health club, or exercise regularly, or even eat your vegetables.”

Even the Congressional Budget Office determined during the Clinton administration’s attempt at health care reform, that “the government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.” Once again we see a dangerous precedent being set by those who favor unlimited government power in a misguided attempt to ‘help’ people. Shredding the Constitution will not result in a better country no matter what the justification.

As James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers: “[I]n the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects.”