CATO Speaker At Congressional Hearing Video/Transcript

During a Congressional committee hearing Tuesday concerning Presidential powers and President Barack Obama’s failure to implement his “law of the land “Affordable Care Act as written, an expert from the Cato Institute said that the President’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law has the potential to spark an armed rebellion against the government. 

Michael Cannon, Director of Cato’s Health Policy Studies, said that the President’s failure to adhere to laws could give American citizens justification to follow suit in seeking to improve government on their own terms. 

“There is one last … thing to which the people can resort if the government does not respect the restraints that the Constitution places on the government,” Cannon told lawmakers. “Abraham Lincoln talked about our right to alter our government or our revolutionary right to overthrow it. 

“…That is certainly something that no one wants to contemplate,” he continued. “…If the people come to believe that the government is no longer constrained by the laws then they will conclude that neither are they. 

“That … is a very dangerous sort of thing for the President to do, to wantonly ignore the laws,” Cannon concluded, “to try to impose obligation upon people that the legislature did not approve.”

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