This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, April 2nd, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown. The individual

mandate is the keystone of Obamacare, but does it pass constitutional muster?

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute,

says even if you accept as legitimate the strained

logic of regulating non-interstate non-commerce

as interstate commerce, there's no constitutional argument for the feds forcing Americans to buy health insurance.

What should we understand the Commerce Clause to authorize the federal government to do?

Originally the Commerce Clause was enacted in response to problems that had arisen under the Articles of Confederation.

Specifically, states were imposing under the Articles of Confederation.

Specifically, states were imposing tariffs and quotas

on goods coming across state lines from other states.

And this impeded the flow of interstate trade

and prevented the nation from growing at the pace that it could

otherwise have grown. The framers were very concerned about that and one of the major

purposes of the Constitutional Convention was to make sure that there were none of these insidious

barriers to trade and thus the federal government, the national government was given the power

to regulate interstate commerce and by that the framers meant to make commerce

regular to make sure that it did flow freely across state borders not to impose further impediments on trade, but to make trade regular, to free the

flow of trade.

That was its original purpose.

Jump forward to the 1930s when we essentially had our understanding of that clause changed.

Most of the damage was done in a whole series of cases, probably the worst of which was Wiccord v.

...