from GoldSeek.com / by Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital / April 12, 2012
Last week, responding to President Obama’s latest populist assault on the wealthy, I issued a commentary in which I explained why his ideas about American economic history were fundamentally flawed. As dangerous and erroneous as those views are, at least I can cut the President some slack for commenting on a subject in which he really has no basis for expertise. Hailing from academia and local community organizing, Barack Obama likely did not spend huge amounts of time boning up on economic history. However, there are other subjects where he should find firmer footing. Constitutional law certainly comes to mind. After all, Obama rose to national prominence based on his status as a legal scholar. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he was elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He went on to teach constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, one of the top ranked schools in the country.
Based on these achievements, it is simply stunning that he made so many fundamental errors last week in his analysis of the Supreme Court’s review of his sweeping health care legislation. Not only did he make grossly inaccurate statements with regards to the health care legislation, and the history of Supreme Court decisions that relate to it, but he also showed little understanding of the very purpose that the Court serves within the constitutional framework of the U.S. government. These remarks either indicate that a Harvard degree isn’t worth the paper it’s written on or that there is nothing Obama won’t say to advance his political agenda.
In his apparently off-the-cuff remarks he stated that “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what will be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” Before even turning to the more nuanced parts of that statement, I would ask the President what he considers to be a “strong majority?” His health care legislation (dubbed “Obamacare” by Republicans), passed the House of Representatives in March 2010 on a nearly party line vote of 220-221 (some would call this result “a squeaker.”) What’s more, just six months later, the slim majority that voted to pass the legislation was voted out of existence. Not only would the law stand no chance of passage in the current Congress, the majority of Americans still show misgivings about the expansion of federal power that the law involves. So much for a groundswell of national support. But that’s just the appetizer.
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