By the Monitor’s Editorial Board / December 29, 2010

If the November elections sent one clear message to Washington on what it should do in 2011, it is this: no more bailouts.

The federal rescue of Wall Street, General Motors, Fannie Mae, and sundry other entities drowning in red ink did not go down well with voters – even if a few bailouts did have a decent payback.

But the voters’ message could get lost if Congress is forced to deal with a likely crisis in the new year: states and cities that can’t pay their bills, especially the retirement benefits of state workers.

By this spring, many states will run out of the $217 billion in stimulus money from Washington. (Illinois is already a deadbeat in paying bills.) Their budget woes will only mount as joblessness persists and politics prevents solutions in state houses.

Most of all, they face an estimated shortfall of $3.23 trillion owed to pension plans for current and retired state workers. Municipalities have an estimated $557 billion in pension liabilities. That adds up to about a quarter of the yearly US economic output.

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By the Monitor’s Editorial Board / December 14, 2010

*Rated 2nd most read piece on RealClearPolitics.com*

The most targeted piece of President Obama’s health-care law is this mandate: Beginning in 2014, every American must purchase health insurance – under penalty of law. Except for the poor, elderly, and a few others, anyone who has not purchased insurance will face a hefty fine – 2.5 percent of one’s income.

Never before has the federal government tried to punish citizens for not engaging in a private activity. This “individual mandate” is a legal innovation, one now being challenged in several courts. On Monday, US District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled that the mandate “exceeds the Commerce Clause powers vested in Congress under Article I [of the Constitution].” Two other federal judges, however, recently ruled in favor of the mandate’s constitutionality.

At least one of these cases will probably reach the Supreme Court by 2012. As in many of its decisions, the high court may be split in a 5-to-4 vote. And Justice Anthony Kennedy, as often happens, could be the swing vote and write the majority opinion.

Here is what he may well say – in a layman’s version of arguments – against the mandate:

This court is often asked to balance the right to individual liberty against Congress’s power to regulate national markets. The law under question, however, actually forces individuals to participate in a market – health-care insurance. If this mandate were to stand, it would erode the Bill of Rights’ Ninth Amendment, in which the listing of rights in the Constitution does not deny other rights “retained by the people.”

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