A superfluous suit

Indiana has become the 15th state whose attorney general has filed suit against the federal government in an attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the newly passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Indiana joins 13 other states in a suit being filed in Florida that will challenge the constitutionality of the law’s mandate that individuals buy insurance or face a fine, and Virginia is bringing a separate case on different grounds.

It is appropriate to wonder why this undoubtedly costly and frivolous lawsuit is even taking place.

To argue, as Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller does, that this suit is not political is to conveniently turn a blind eye to the fact that 13 of the 14 other attorneys general filing suit are Republicans. Turning an eye toward history would also benefit those filing suit against health care reform.

Similar questions of constitutionality were raised during President Bill Clinton’s tenure as Democrats pushed for passage of the Health Security Act (which also included an individual mandate to buy insurance). This mandate, although a Republican idea at the time, was argued and debated, and it was found by many scholars to be constitutional.

These arguments might come from a genuine concern, but ultimately, they end only after costly trials and countless hours in pursuit of a new talking point.

Even when the past can be ignored, however, the wasteful spending of today cannot.

This lawsuit will prove to be a costly uphill battle for ideologues in the Republican Party to fight in order to preserve a reputation of conservatism. And although this spending could be limited to one suit and one state, there is safety in numbers.

Why is it not enough that one state files suit in question of this mandate’s constitutionality?

If the Supreme Court rules in its favor, every state would be directly affected, whether a suit was filed by its attorney general or not. The security and solidarity of numbers solidifies the partisanship of this suit and does little to advance the idea that this suit is, as Zoeller has said, “to represent the significant interests of our state.”

This lawsuit exposes the Republican Party’s fear that this bill will prove to be just as monumentally good for the American people as Democrats have been promising.

Regarding concern about political motives, Zoeller said, “It’s unfortunate that the entire subject matter has been politicized, but that was done in Washington before we ever joined (the suit).”

A childish “they started it” attitude is not one the people of Indiana, or of the United States, need; it is a response that will only continue to enable the politicization of our attorney general and empower him to wastefully spend taxpayers’ dollars in the process.