Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) slammed Democrat colleagues during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for characterizing her as on a “mission from God” to deny people with preexisting conditions healthcare coverage.
“It is unfair for my colleagues to suggest, some overtly, some more indirectly, that if you are put on the United States Supreme Court, you will be on a mission from God to deny healthcare coverage for preexisting conditions for every American,” Kennedy told Barrett.
“I know that seems preposterous to you, and it seems that way because it is. Take comfort in the fact that the American people, some of my colleagues disagree with this statement, they believe in government. I believe in people. The American people are not morons. They can see drivel when they see it,” he added.
Democrats during the hearing repeatedly claimed that the Trump administration and Republicans want to take away healthcare coverage for those with preexisting conditions and that Barrett’s nomination is part of that.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) strongly pushed back against that suggestion, arguing that every Republican senator agrees that preexisting conditions should be covered but that Obamacare has driven the cost of healthcare premiums up and Republicans want to bring them down.
President Trump also weighed in on preexisting healthcare conditions, tweeting during the hearing that people with preexisting conditions will be protected at an “even higher level” than now, and that they would “always” be protected:
Kennedy also warned Barrett that she would face other attacks, such as that she was racist or a white colonialist, recalling the ugliness of the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“Now look, Judge, I am not naive. I understand this thing can turn sour real fast. We all watched the hearings for Justice Kavanaugh. It was a freak show. It looked like the Cantina bar scene out of Star Wars, and I know for someone unaccustomed to it that it hurts to be called a racist. I think it’s one of the worst things you can call an American,” he said.
“I know that it hurts to be called white colonialist, and I know it must hurt for someone of deep Christian faith like yourself to be called a religious bigot, and to have it implied that because you are a devout Christian that you are somehow unfit for public service,” he said.
“Before it’s over with, they may call you Rosemary’s baby for all I know. I hope not, and I know, as we have seen this morning, I know you think it’s unfair,” he quipped.
Kennedy also criticized the Congress for ceding power to an unaccountable “administrative state” and the judicial branch, arguing that the nation’s founders did not want justices to be “politicians in robes.”
“In the last 50 years, certainly, in the last 25, the United States Congress either voluntarily or involuntarily, has ceded a lot of its power to the executive branch. … I am not necessarily talking about the president. I am talking about the administrative state, the bureaucracy as some call it it is this giant rogue beast that enjoys power now that only kings once enjoyed,” he said.
“Members of the administrative state write their own laws, they interpret their own laws, they litigate their own laws and their own courts before judges that they appoint, and Congress has allowed that to happen,” he added.
“Congress has also advocated a lot of power to the federal judiciary. … I don’t think our founders intended judges to be politicians and rogues. I think our founders intended judges — federal judges — to tell us what the law is, not what the law ought to be.”
In a dig to Democrats relying on the Supreme Court to determine healthcare policy, he said, “I don’t think our founders intended the United States Supreme Court to become a mini-Congress.”
“I don’t think our founders intended members of the United States Supreme Court to try to rewrite our statutes or the United States Constitution every other Thursday,” he added. “We have reached the point where one single solitary federal judge in a limited venue can enjoin a federal statute or an executive order of the president of the United States for the entire country, and our founders never intended that.”
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