The week before the 11th Circuit Court begins to hear arguments in the case concerning the Constitutionality of Obamacare, brought by attorneys representing the 26 states that are appealing it, President Barack Hussein Obama’s acting Solicitor General has come up with brilliant advice for the majority of Americans who remain opposed to socialized medicine and the pecuniary taxes which our government will impose upon us with its implementation.

Acting Solicitor General Neal Kumar Katyal was standing before the 6th Circuit Court on Wednesday, defending Obamacare against an appeal by the Thomas More Law Center. He told the federal appeals court that Americans who didn’t like the individual mandate could always avoid it by choosing to earn less money.

You see, SG Katyal was struggling to defending the unconstitutional law in front of the three-judge panel, which was comprised of two Republican-appointed judges and a Democratic-appointed judge. The judges were actively expressing their doubts about the government’s defense of the health care law, more so than the Fourth Circuit panel that heard the Virginia-based Obamacare challenge last month in Richmond did.

Of course, the Fourth Circuit panel is made up entirely of Democrats, and two of the judges were appointed by Obama himself.

I’m shocked.

Katyal was put on the spot, when Judge Jeffrey Sutton, nominated by President George W. Bush, asked Katyal if he could name one Supreme Court case which considered the same question as the one posed by the mandate, in which Congress used the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution as a tool to compel action.

Katyal had to admit that the Supreme Court had “never been confronted directly” with the question, but deferred to the Heart of Atlanta Motel case as a relevant example.

The Heart of Atlanta Motel case was a landmark 1964 civil rights case in which the Court ruled that Congress could use its Commerce Clause power to bar discrimination by private businesses such as hotels and restaurants.

Judge Sutton wasn’t buying that argument:

They’re in the business. They’re told if you’re going to be in the business, this is what you have to do. In response to that law, they could have said, ‘We now exit the business.’ Individuals don’t have that option.

Then, Katyal, desperately attempting to come up with a brilliant argument, replied:

If we’re going to play that game, I think that game can be played here as well, because after all, the minimum coverage provision only kicks in after people have earned a minimum amount of income. So it’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring. It’s not just on self insuring on its own. So I guess one could say, just as the restaurant owner could depart the market in Heart of Atlanta Motel, someone doesn’t need to earn that much income. I think both are kind of fanciful and I think get at…

Sutton stopped him cold, saying:

That wasn’t in a single speech given in Congress about this…the idea that the solution if you don’t like it is make a little less money.

Katyal’s problem was that fact that the so-called “hardship exemption” in the health care law that he was referring to is limited, and only applies to people who cannot obtain insurance for less than 8 percent of their income. So earning less isn’t necessarily a solution, because it could then qualify the person for government-subsidized insurance which could make their contribution to premiums fall below the 8 percent threshold.

Katyal floundered about during the oral arguments in a vain attempt to respond to the judges’ questions concerning what the limits of Congressional power would be if the courts ruled that they have the ability under the Commerce Clause to force individuals to purchase something.

Per Judge Sutton, it would it be “hard to see this limit” in Congressional power if the mandate is upheld, and he concentrated on the word “regulate” in the Commerce clause, explaining that the word implies you’re in a market. According to the Judge:

You don’t put them in the market to regulate them.

And, in a related story, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced the kick-off of his Presidential Campaign yesterday, at Stratham Farm in New Hampshire, a must-stop location for all GOP contenders.

On May 12th of this year, Romney gave a speech defending his role in the passage of the Massachusetts state-run Healthcare system, affectionately known as Romneycare.

He argued that his state-based approach was different than the president’s and was the right legislation for Massachusetts:

…I also recognize, a lot of pundits are saying I should stand up and say this whole thing was a mistake.

But there’s only one problem with that—it wouldn’t be honest. I, in fact, did what I felt was right for the people of my state.

We’re going to care for one another. I’m proud of the fact that in our state, when we faced real challenges … we didn’t just say, ‘Well, it’s a problem no one can solve.’ We said, ‘We gotta job to do. We gotta help people.

It wasn’t perfect. It included a number of things I’d do differently.… But overall, am I proud of fact we did our best for people, and we got people insured? Absolutely.

The first distinction between what we did in my state and President Obama did was our plan was a state solution to a state problem, and his was a power grab by federal government to put in place a one-size-fits-all plan.

This is what we would call [the] free-rider program.It wasn’t a larger number of people, but a growing problem.

On the other hand…former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin thinks that ol’ Mitt should be hanging his political future on how wonderful Romneycare is:

I think that he’ll have maybe a bit more challenges with independents who make up the tea party movement, wanting to make sure we are not going to — we won’t have any excuses or perceived political reasons to grow government. In my opinion, any mandate coming from government is not a good thing, obviously, and I am not the only one to say so. But obviously there will be more explanation coming from Governor Romney for his support of government mandates.

The day after Gov. Romney’s announcement of his candidacy, my mind strays back to this exchange he had with Charlie Gibson and Fred Thompson during ABC’s January 2008 Republican presidential debate:

GIBSON: But Government Romney’s system has mandates in Massachusetts, although you backed away from mandates on a national basis.

ROMNEY: No, no, I like mandates. The mandates work.

THOMPSON: I beg your pardon? I didn’t know you were going to admit that. You like mandates.

Well, Gov. Romney, I don’t.  Like Governor Palin, and the majority of Americans, I prefer FREEDOM.