House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday revealed a quick tidbit about the passage of the health care overhaul — namely that President Barack Obama said it made him “happier” than he was on election night 2008.
(Related: Pelosi: ‘I’m Predicting Six-to-Three in Favor’ for Health Care Ruling)
“The day after it passed the president called, he said, ‘Last night when you passed that bill, the health care bill, I was happier than I was when I was elected president of the United States,’” Pelosi said during a private event at the Paley Center for Media in New York.
“What a beautiful thought,” she continued. “And I said, ‘Well I was pretty happy last night too, Mr. President, but not happier than when you were elected president because if you weren’t elected president, we wouldn’t be having this success today.’”
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She also criticized Republicans for their eagerness to see the Supreme Court overturn the law when the party has generally opposed such sweeping moves by the court system.
“They were not big fans of the court and they didn’t want them acting upon legislation they passed as the majority, until now,” Pelosi said. “Now they support judicial review because they want to take the health care bill before the court.”
Pelosi was referring to the doctrine of judicial review, established in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison and which said the court is responsible for determining the constitutionality of a law.
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As radio talk show host and constitutional lawyer Mark Levin said Wednesday on Fox News, judicial review is an “implied power,” not specifically in the Constitution but is “settled law going back almost to the beginning.”
“Judges and justices need to be very careful about how they apply it and the primary thing they’re supposed to do is make sure they do their very best to determine the original intent of the framers, what the language means,” Levin said. “They’re not trying to rejigger it, they’re not trying to social engineer.”
Obama prompted outrage this week when he said he believed the law would be upheld, and that a move to overturn it would be “judicial activism.”
“Because this individual mandate has absolutely no precedent, absolutely no constitutional history behind it, Obama is saying this is what I want and I’m warning you before you write your opinions, you folks need to understand,” Levin said.
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