COURT HEARS REDISTRICTING CHALLENGE
Supreme Court justices raised tough questions Monday about Arizona’s use of an independent commission to draw legislative maps. Conservative justices, in particular, sounded skeptical about independent redistricting commissions that effectively leave elected state legislators out of the process. But in a hint of a divided court and a close decision to come, several liberal justices voiced more sympathy for Arizona’s use of a general election ballot measure to establish the new redistricting system as a way to avoid gerrymandering. The innovation is being challenged under the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that the “times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” No date was set for a decision.
— Tribune News Service
Congressional Republicans sent a message Monday they hope the Supreme Court and voters will hear: The country’s health care system won’t crumble if the justices obliterate a bedrock feature of President Barack Obama’s heath care law.
Three top senators said that if the court invalidates federal subsidies that help millions of Americans buy coverage under Obama’s law, they have a plan to protect them and create “better” insurance markets by giving states more leeway to decide what insurers must cover.
In an opinion article in Monday’s Washington Post, GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming and Orrin Hatch of Utah offered scant detail about how much assistance their plan would provide, its duration or how it would last.
They also did not describe how they would push such a package through Congress, where Republicans are split about how to respond to such a court ruling, or how they would get Obama, who opposes any weakening of his 2010 law, to sign it.
“First and most important: We would provide financial assistance to help Americans keep the coverage they picked for a transitional period,” the senators wrote. “It would be unfair to allow families to lose their coverage, particularly in the middle of the year.”
The article appeared two days before the Supreme Court hears arguments in a case brought by conservatives and Republicans contending that tax credits helping millions of people who buy health coverage from a federally run insurance marketplace in 37 states are not legal. Most of those states are run and represented in Congress by Republicans.
The only credits Obama’s law allows are for people in the 13 states running their own marketplaces, the plaintiffs say.
The Obama administration and Democrats who enacted the law over unanimous Republican opposition say it was always intended to provide subsidies in all the states. A court decision is expected in June.
Republicans weren’t the only lawmakers making statements that seemed aimed as much at the court’s nine justices as at the public.
In their column, the three senators call the case “an opportunity” to reshape the law and say they “have a plan to protect these people and create a bridge away from” the statute.
Democrats say the law has forced insurers to cover more benefits and cite figures showing a large reduction in the number of uninsured Americans.
Alexander chairs the Senate Health committee, Hatch heads the Senate Finance Committee and Barrasso is in the Senate Republican leadership.
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