This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 13, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

One argument offered by the Obama administration in favor of its health care law is rooted in what it calls a crisis in the health care

market. That may justify a large-scale reform of the health care industry, but a

crisis in the health care market doesn't make this particular reform

constitutional.

Trevor Burris, a legal associate at the Cato Institute, comments.

The Obama administration has argued that given the circumstances the crisis in the national health care market I think was the

terminology that they used.

The legislation, the Affordable Care Act, was an appropriate response given that.

Exactly.

This is a period in their brief arguing for the individual mandate which was filed in early January

and part of the argument is that the individual mandate was a proper response to a crisis in national health care.

The interesting thing about this is that they're trying to hinge the power of the federal government

on whether or not it's responding to a crisis.

I wonder if they would actually forward this view consistently across the board, because there's many things that the government could do to respond to a so-called crisis and I wonder for example if they would use this argument to support the Patriot Act if they opposed it if they would be okay well what

makes the Patriot Act constitutional is it's responding to a crisis and when you

think about it that way you realize it's an absolutely monstrous proposition

that the that the US government would have power based on an asserted crisis.

What they have is they have enumerated powers that tell what the sort of ends that they're

allowed to pursue are.

And nowhere does it give them a general power for crisis.

Let's say the Constitution says this is fine.

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