Senate Democrats, increasingly resigned to the likely confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, are making Obamacare’s fate central to their messaging in the confirmation hearings this week.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Barrett would take a seat on the high court just weeks before the expected Nov. 10 hearing of a case testing the legality of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
“The president has promised to appoint justices who will vote to dismantle that law,” Feinstein, of California, said during her opening statement.
With few procedural or political maneuvers available to derail Barrett’s nomination, Democrats have pivoted to making the case that Barrett will ultimately vote with other GOP-appointed justices to overturn the healthcare law.
Republicans have been trying to overturn Obamacare for years, and President Trump has promised to replace it with something better but far less centralized.
“If Republicans are successful, the results will be nothing short of catastrophic for millions of Americans who depend upon its coverage and protections,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said, appearing remotely at the hearing.
Barrett’s appointment would result in a court with six Republican-appointed justices and three justices appointed by Democrats.
Democrats argued Republicans should not be moving forward with Barrett’s confirmation so close to an election and in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans, Leahy said, “see the potential to wildly swing the balance of the court.”
Senate Democrats said they plan to turn their attention to making the public aware of Barrett’s judicial philosophy. It’s a move that could help motivate their base in the critical weeks leading up to the election.
Some Democrats are calling for a vote to expand the Supreme Court, which under a Democratic majority and White House would allow them to pack it with justices of their own choosing.
Healthcare ranks among the top issues voters are concerned about, polls show.
Barrett has criticized Chief Justice John Roberts’s 2012 vote to uphold Obamacare.
Speaking to pool reporters in the hearing room, Sen. Richard Blumenthal outlined the plan Democrats plan to execute now that it appears likely Barrett will end up on the high court.
“Our strategy is to reveal this judge for what she is,” the Connecticut senator told reporters. “Determined to legislate from the bench and repeal laws that the American people support, that Congress refused to erase, and essentially to repeal the protections for people with preexisting conditions.”
Democrats, including Blumenthal, plan to discuss how the end of Obamacare would impact their own constituents.
When Illinois Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin delivered his opening statement, he talked about a boy with a heart defect whose family would have been unable to pay medical bills if not for Obamacare, which bans lifetime coverage limits.
“Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Kenny was able to get the care he needed,” Durbin said.
Stories like Kenny’s will be an integral part of the Democratic strategy at the hearings.
“It’s a matter of life and death to them,” Blumenthal said. “Approving this justice potentially will cause a real humanitarian nightmare. And what we intend to do in this hearing is make the American people aware, arouse them to the danger and make them stand up and speak out.”
Rep. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, called Barrett “a judicial torpedo aimed at their essential protections,” and said the entire confirmation hearing targets the Affordable Care Act.
“America is worried about one thing above all else right now, it’s our health,” Whitehouse said, outlining how Obamacare is helping people in his state who need long-term care, such as those with kidney disease.”
Barrett, in her opening statement released on Sunday, said she does not plan to make policy from the bench.
“When I write an opinion resolving a case,” Barrett wrote, “I read every word from the perspective of the losing party. I ask myself how I would view the decision if one of my children was the party I was ruling against.”
