Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Obama Signs Health Care Bill Today as GOP Challenges Constitutionality

President Obama signed the historic health care bill into law today, but Republicans are still fighting back with promises of lawsuits and heated rhetoric, including a shot from one GOP governor who blasted what he called Obama's "nanny nation approach" to government.

Republicans across the country are specifically challenging the mandate in the health care bill that requires every individual to have health insurance, charging that it is unconstitutional.

The individual mandate is an "unprecedented overreach by the federal government forcing individual citizens to buy a good or a service for no other reason then they happen to be alive or a person," Republican governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty said today on "Good Morning America."

Pawlenty said he sent a letter to Minnesota's Democratic attorney general arguing against the constitutionality of the mandate.

"They've taken it to this big, federalized, bureaucratic, government-run, kind of nanny nation approach," Pawlenty said. "I don't think defending the Constitution and individual's rights under the Constitution, and the relationship between states and the federal government under the Constitution is a frivolous matter."

SOURCE: ABC News