CNS News ^ | 5/31/2012 | Elizabeth Harrington
(CNSNews.com) – House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Thursday that the Supreme Court will vote 6-3 to uphold the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s health care law, meaning that one member of the court's 4-vote conservative wing--which includes Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts--will side with the administration on the challenges to the legislation that the court heard earlier this year.
"6-3. That's it. 6-3," said a seemingly confident Pelosi.
In addition to Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, the other five justices on the court are Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Pelosi was also confident about the constitutionality of the individual mandate back in 2009 when it the bill was under consideration in Congress. When CNSNews.com asked her at that time where specifically the Constitution authorized Congress to force people to buy health insurance, she said: "Are you serious? Are you serious?"
At a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday, a reporter asked Pelosi, “Madame Leader, the Supreme Court is getting ready to rule in the next month or so on the health care bill, and you’ve expressed pretty high confidence – I think you said 6-3 – but I’m just wondering if Democrats and the Democratic leadership have had any discussions or meetings to plan for any sort of contingency plan given the possibility that the court could strike any provisions from the law or the whole law, I’m wondering if Democrats are having any meetings to discuss contingency plans?”
Pelosi, in reference to how the nine-judge court will rule, said, “6-3. That’s it. 6-3.”
She was then asked why she was so confident about her prediction, "Do you have a crystal ball or what is your confidence -- you wrote the bill but why do you have this confidence?"
Pelosi said: “Because I know the Constitution. This bill is ironclad. It is ironclad.”
“Nobody was frivolous with the Constitution and the health of the American people in writing the bill,” she said. “So, that’s where my confidence springs from, the merit of the bill and the nature of the Constitution.”
“The makeup of the court, well, we’ll see,” Pelosi said.
(President Barack Obama embraces Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, left, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in the East Room of the White House in Washington after signing the health care bill into law on March 23, 2010.)
In March, the Supreme Court heard three days of oral arguments on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in Obamacare, which would require nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance, either through their employer, by themselves, or from the government or face financial penalties.
A decision is expected at the end of the court’s session in late June.
Pelosi previously predicted a 6-3 decision on April 3, during a speech at the Paley Center for Media in New York. But back on Mar. 28, when asked whether the mandate would be ruled constitutional or not, Pelosi said, “I have no idea. None of us does. We are all now talking about something of which we have no knowledge because we are not members of the Supreme Court. We have knowledge of the legislation. We have knowledge of the arguments. But we have no idea of what the outcome will be.”
