Senate Democrats tied Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett to President Donald Trump‘s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as Barrett’s confirmation hearings began on Monday.
In their statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats voiced their concerns over healthcare, specifically former President Barack Obama‘s health care law.
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) said in her opening statement, “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.”
Barrett once commented on Chief Justice John Roberts‘ decision that upheld Obamacare, saying the holding had “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute.”
Barrett wrote, “Had he treated the payment as the statute did – vas a penalty – he would have had to invalidate the statute as lying beyond Congress’s commerce power.”
Democrats are expected to focus their arguments on the possibility of Barrett overturning the ACA. They warned that if Barrett were to overturn Obamacare, millions of Americans would lose access to health care coverage.
