Pawlenty backs off on constitutional health care gambit
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Star Tribune: Even as three Republican state legislators are pushing for a potential constitutional showdown to sidestep a federal health care overhaul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty is backing off from such a move.
Reps. Tom Emmer, Mark Buesgens and Peggy Scott held a Capitol news conference today to announce a proposed state constitutional amendment that would guarantee Minnesotans the right to choose private health care plans. Such an amendment, which would have to be approved by voters, would "protect health care freedom of choice." The bill would also prohibit fines for those who decline to participate in government health care mandates. For Emmer, who's running for governor, it's a rerun of a proposal he has made three other times, most recently in this year's legislative session when he sponsored a bill stating "that the State of Minnesota hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Invoking state sovereignty under that amendment was raised as a possibility by Pawlenty last week as he roundly criticized President Obama's health care plans. At one point he suggested that a lawsuit could be the best recourse. By Sunday, however, Pawlenty was inching away from using the 10th Amendment to block any federal health care reforms that ultimately become law.
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