Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made quite a claim last week, arguing that the Founding Fathers would totally love Obamacare! Yes, the men who founded an entire nation from scratch and drafted a Constitution that could have basically included whatever they wanted – and yet didn’t bother to include anything about universal healthcare – would be super excited about a massive, bloated, and failing before-it’s-even-implemented government program.
PELOSI: This week marks one year since the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act. It captures the spirit of our Founders, the spirit they wrote in the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, to be free of constraint and job lock and policy lock.
“I don't even know what she's talking about,” Glenn said.
“But here's what she's saying,” Pat clarified. “That this massive takeover over what percentage of our economy is it? 25 percent? A third? What is it?… Yeah, one quarter of our economy. This massive takeover by the government is what our Founders – that’s the spirit of the Founders? The spirit of massive government and socialism and forcing people to pay a tax to be citizens in good standing, that's all in the spirit of the Founders?”
“And that's why, of course, the Founders in 1791 put in the first government universal healthcare system…” Stu joked. “They were there and they put it right… oh, no, they didn't do that at all.”
The Founding Fathers could have put a lot of things into the Constitution – the right to a job, the right to land, the right to a certain salary, the right to healthcare – but they chose not to. And, more importantly, they chose not to for a reason.
“Yeah, they could have done a lot of things. They could have said you have a right to a job, you have a right to a certain salary, you have the right to shelter, you have a right to healthcare,” Pat said. “They could have given away plots of land and you could have owned the entire country with your citizenry, but they didn't do that because they didn't want to, and they knew it was wrong. They knew that system of government just didn't work.”
WATCH Rep. Pelosi’s full remarks below: