By fitsnews – March 24, 2010
By FITSNews || Three of South Carolina’s most fiscally conservative lawmakers – all GOP Congressional candidates in 2010 – are joining forces in an effort “to protect individual South Carolinians from the dire consequences of the federal government’s unconstitutional health care takeover.”
State Representatives Jeff Duncan, Tim Scott and State Senator Mick Mulvaney said Tuesday they will consolidate three existing bills into one piece of legislation that will serve as a vehicle for putting a rebuke of “Obamacare” on the statewide ballot in 2010. Such a ballot question will give South Carolina voters an opportunity to amend the State Constitution to protect their individual rights regarding health care. The amendment is also likely to dramatically increase conservative voter turnout in the 2010 election – a Godsend to Republicans.
Duncan, Scott and Mulvaney have each preemptively filed separate legislation that would block various components of this unconstitutional big government power grab – which was passed Sunday by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed into law by President Barack Obama on Tuesday at a White House signing ceremony. Now they will join with other lawmakers – like Upstate Rep. Eric Bedingfield – in promoting a single bill that a source tells FITS will “incorporate the most effective statutory protections and ballot language.”
“If elected officials in Washington are going to trample over our rights as citizens, then we have an obligation to reassert our rights at the state level,” Mulvaney said. “This is an unprecedented government power grab that makes a mockery of the principles this nation was founded upon, and we need to resist it using every tool at our disposal – including the statewide ballot.”
Mulvaney is running for South Carolina’s Fifth Congressional District against House Budget Chairman John Spratt, the primary legislative sponsor of “Obamacare.”
Tim Scott – who is the GOP front-runner in a ten-way race for the S.C. First Congressional District – said Tuesday that South Carolinians “deserve the right to have their say on this unconstitutional health care takeover that puts government between them and their doctors.”
“(We) know that higher taxes, more spending, higher insurance premiums and more government control are a recipe for disaster – particularly in this economic climate,” Scott said. “Sadly, our voices – and the voices of millions of other Americans – were ignored in this debate.”
Scott, incidentally, was endorsed on Tuesday by the national Club for Growth – which is fighting Obamacare via a “Repeal It” pledge. As of this writing, 57 lawmakers, 206 Congressional candidates and over 14,000 citizens had signed the pledge.
Duncan, who has also been endorsed by the national Club for Growth, said that South Carolinians “cannot stay silent on this issue – we have to stand up against such a grave threat to our freedoms.”
“Fixing health care starts with empowering individual choices and empowering the free market, not ramming socialist takeovers through Congress,” Duncan said. “The last five decades have proven conclusively that government’s involvement has only made our health care situation worse, but now Washington wants to dramatically and unconstitutionally expand its control over the system. Worst of all, it’s doing so at the expense of our liberties, our financial security and the quality of our care.”
Needless to say, the Republican Party was pleased at the prospect of a ballot referendum bashing Obamacare.
“South Carolina Republicans have really risen to the occasion to fight this federal health care debacle,” said SCGOP Executive Director Joel Sawyer. “Our Congressional Republicans have been united against it, our Republican Attorney General Henry McMaster is pursing legal action against it, and these and other conservative leaders in the State House are making a strong push to prevent its implementation here. South Carolinians have been crystal clear that they don’t want the federal government intruding in our lives in this way and taking our health care decisions from us, and we would welcome any protections at the state level to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
