Rand Paul pushes constitutional amendment on Congress
BURGESS EVERETT
Forget the Vitter amendment. Rand Paul wants to make sure that Congress can’t ever again write laws with provisions specific to lawmakers.
The Kentucky freshman Republican has introduced a constitutional amendment that would preclude senators and representatives from passing laws that don’t apply equally to U.S. citizens and Congress, the executive branch and the Supreme Court. The amendment is aimed squarely at Obamacare provisions specific to members of Congress and their staffs that became a central point of contention during the government shutdown.
Under Obamacare, Capitol Hill aides and lawmakers are required to enter the law’s health exchanges and a summertime ruling from the Office of Personnel Management ensured they will continue to receive federal employer contributions to help pay for insurance on the exchanges. A number of lawmakers, specifically Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), have been pushing for the end to those contributions, arguing they amount to a Washington exemption from Obamacare. Vitter has drafted legislative language that would eliminate these subsidies and tried to attach the measure to an energy efficiency bill and pushed for it to be included in the government funding bill last week.
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Paul seeks to go a step further and amend the Constitution so that “Congress shall make no law applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress,” the executive branch including the president and vice president as well as the Supreme Court.
Paul told the Daily Caller in September that the amendment would take specific aim at Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, whose swing vote upheld the constitutionality of much of the Affordable Care Act.
“If he likes Obamacare so much, I’m going to give him an amendment that gives Obamacare to Justice Roberts,” Paul told the publication.
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Amending the Constitution is no easy task, requiring super majorities in both chambers of Congress before going to the states for ratification. And Paul in particular will face the immense burden of trying to convince lawmakers that they should no longer have the authority to make laws governing Congress.