* Obama remarks on Supreme Court “unremarkable” -White House
* Conservatives accuse Obama of “bullying”
(Updates with Republican, legal analyst comment)
By Alister Bull
WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) – The White House was forced
on the defensive on Wednesday as it sought to explain
controversial remarks President Barack Obama made earlier in the
week about the Supreme Court’s review of his signature
healthcare reform law.
“What he did was make an unremarkable observation about 80
years of Supreme Court history,” Carney told reporters during a
White House briefing dominated by the topic.
Obama expressed confidence on Monday that the Court would
not take an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” by overturning
the law, provoking a storm of protest that he had been
inaccurate and was challenging the nation’s top judges in an
election year.
The Supreme Court could decide to reject his Affordable Care
Act to expand health insurance to millions of Americans,
striking down a key achievement of his presidency and
potentially harming Obama’s bid for re-election on Nov. 6.
The president, who taught constitutional law at the
University of Chicago, qualified the remark a day later by
stressing he meant action by the Court on a matter of commerce,
a legal distinction that cut little ice with his critics.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who backs Mitt Romney
for the Republican nomination to confront Obama, told Fox News
the president was “bullying the Supreme Court,” and the White
House was grilled on whether he had gone too far.
Legal experts were not persuaded that was actually the case,
pointing to instances when U.S. presidents have campaigned
against the Supreme Court in the past. But the topic has loomed
large in Washington after the Court held three days of oral
arguments on the healthcare reforms last week.
During robust questioning, when Carney was told at one point
that he had mischaracterized what the president had said, the
press secretary was forced to repeatedly defend the remarks of
his boss as an observation of fact.
80 YEARS
“Since the 1930s the Supreme Court has without exception
deferred to Congress when it comes to Congress’s authority to
pass legislation to regulate matters of national economic
importance such as health care, 80 years,” Carney said.
A decision by the Supreme Court is expected by late June.
Skeptical questioning by some of the court’s
Republican-appointed justices during last week’s arguments has
raised the possibility that a central part of the law, requiring
most people to buy health insurance, may be struck down. That
would likely sink the entire law as a result.
“He did not mean and did not suggest that … it would be
unprecedented for the court to rule that a law was
unconstitutional. That’s what the Supreme Court is there to
do,” Carney said. “But it has, under the Commerce Clause,
deferred to Congress’ authority in matters of national economic
importance.”
The Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution gives Congress
authority to regulate commerce between states.
Republicans pounced on the issue to highlight what they view
as the president playing politics with the Court.
“These shallow, preemptive attacks on the Court would be
troubling even if the facts supported their claims – and they
don’t,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House of
Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in
Congress.
However, past White Houses have from time to time weighed in
on cases being considered by the Supreme Court.
Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt fought
furiously when it threatened his New Deal economic legislation
during the 1930s, and even proposed adding more justices to the
Court to ensure a majority would back the legislation.
In recent years, Republican President George W Bush insisted
the Court had no role to play in reviewing his decision to
detain terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay prison.
“I don’t think it is uncommon for presidents to assert their
powers and question the role of courts in a variety of
circumstances,” said David Cole, a constitutional law professor
at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington.
“But at the end of the day, what I think is important, is
that presidents have followed the Court’s decisions and enforced
them, even if they disagreed with them,” he said.
(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Jackie Frank)
