Carrie Severino: Democrats’ Claim Barrett Would Gut Obamacare ‘Baseless and False Attack’

The president of the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) tweeted Monday that Senate Democrats’ claim Amy Coney Barrett should not be confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court because she would strike down Obamacare is “a baseless and false attack.”

In a tweet thread, Carrie Severino observed Democrat members of the Senate Judiciary Committee attempted to make the first day of Barrett’s confirmation hearings about Obamacare (Affordable Care Act) rather than her qualifications to serve as an associate justice of the highest Court in the nation.

“One after another today, Senate Democrats are claiming that Judge Barrett would strike down Obamacare and jeopardize healthcare for millions of Americans,” Severino noted. “This is just a baseless and false attack.”

The Democrat members of the committee attempted to link Barrett to President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle Obamacare.

Ranking Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein (CA) said:

The president has promised to appoint justices who will vote to dismantle that law. As a candidate he criticized the Supreme Court for upholding the law and said, ‘If I win the presidency, my judicial appointments will do the right thing, unlike Bush’s appointee John Roberts on ObamaCare.’

Democrat vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) also said Republicans are trying to rush Barrett’s nomination through because they want the Supreme Court to do their “dirty work” on Obamacare.

“It is absurd to suggest that Judge Barrett—a mother of seven children, one of whom has special needs—is insensitive to the healthcare needs of normal Americans,” Severino said, adding Barrett “has never said that she would strike down Obamacare.”

Severino noted that, on the day of her nomination, Barrett said, “A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they may hold.”

In a fact check of the Democrats’ claim that Barrett’s confirmation would overturn Obamacare in its entirety, Breitbart News found the claim to be “mostly false.”

“While it is possible, it is very unlikely, given the nature of the case,” Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak wrote, citing Jonathan Turley on Fox News who also said, “The ACA, most likely, will not be struck down.”

Turley explained that Chief Justice John Roberts and perhaps Justice Brett Kavanaugh might be inclined to argue that Obamacare could survive without the individual mandate.

While Barrett has been critical of the way in which Roberts upheld the individual mandate, as a tax, she never criticized the ACA itself.

The Hill reported as well that Barrett “has never explicitly said she would” overturn Obamacare.

“Democrats can’t attack Judge Barrett’s qualifications, so they are falling back to pure scare tactics—the same thing they do every time they have no good argument,” Severino continued in her tweet thread, describing Barrett as “a careful and fair-minded judge who has demonstrated that she will apply the law to the facts in every case. Period.”