WASHINGTON, D.C. — Minutes after the Supreme Court announced its 5-4 decision upholding the landmark Obamacare law, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) told ThinkProgress that “this is one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history.”

KEYES: Do you think this is one of the worst decisions ever?

GINGREY: I think this is one of the worst decisions in Supreme Court history. I still respect the Supreme Court justices, I’m just disappointed bitterly and vehemently disagree with the decision, just like I was in 1973 when Chief Justice Warren Burger sided with the majority on that bone-headed ruling to destroy human life.

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There have been a number of awful decisions in Supreme Court history, including the Dred Scott ruling that protected slavery and the Plessy case legalizing racial discrimination. To Gingrey, today’s decision ensuring tens of millions of Americans have access to health care is apparently on par with these rulings.

Earlier this month, Gingrey — an obstetrician-gynecologist who serves as the co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus — supported the continuation of the young-adult provision of Obamacare should the bill be struck down, calling it “a good policy.” He also promised to pass individual bills geared towards reducing health costs and preserving coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

In theory, Gingrey should be glad that a law that helps young adults get health insurance, reduces health costs and protects people with pre-existing conditions was upheld today. In reality, he and his Republican colleagues are so vehemently opposed to anything President Obama does that he genuinely believes the ruling could be one of the “worst” ever.

Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

House Democrats stormed out of a Congressional vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress today.

Led by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who originally planned a walk-out yesterday, most Democrats exited the chamber instead of voting to hold the Attorney General in contempt. Both House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) called for the walkout.

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Holder has been the target of Republican fury over ‘Fast and Furious,’ a misguided gun tracking effort initiated by the Bush administration and continued under Pres. Barack Obama in which thousands of guns went missing.

Democrats have criticized the vote for being about politics, not action, since the Republicans’ focus has been on Holder, and not on the gun trading scheme. They feel that Congress should be concentrating on the economy, jobs, and seeking the truth of what happened to the missing guns and a man killed by one.

Holder is the first-ever Attorney General to be charged with contempt by the full House.

A number of reactions were shown after the Supreme Court ruled to uphold President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. However, few elected officials went as far as Senator Rand Paul when he explicitly blasted the Supreme Court as wrong and unqualified to decide constitutional matters. Paul’s disagreement with the court’s decision would clearly mean that he also does not agree with the United States Constitution, which designates the Court as responsible for ruling on the constitutionality of laws. In his statement released after the Court’s decision, he indicated that he felt that the Court’s “incorrect” decision still did not mean that the law was constitutional:

Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.

For the record, Paul also believes that Medicare, Social Security and the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters are unconstitutional.

–Angela Guo

In 2008, the United States had an election, and the American people overwhelmingly elected a president and a Congress who believes it is a moral abomination that, in the wealthiest, most powerful nation that ever existed, tens of thousands of Americans die every day because they cannot afford lifesaving treatment. Today’s decision upholding nearly all of the Affordable Care Act reaffirms that the American people’s decision matters. In Chief Justice Roberts’ words,

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

Yet, while today’s decision is fundamentally a reminder that the United States is a democracy, it also complicates matters quite a bit. For reasons that will be explained in a subsequent post, the opinion butchers an understanding of two key constitutional provisions that prevailed in the very earliest days of the Republic. Perhaps most significantly, it also creates an unprecedented new limit on the federal government’s ability to partner with the states in order to solve national problem — and this limit could cost millions of low-income Americans their access to health care.

Under Medicaid, the feds offer funding to the states to enable them to provide health services to the poor. The states are free to take this money or to leave it on the table, but if they accept it they are required to comply with certain conditions. Nevertheless, the plaintiff challenged Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid to provide health care for all people earning up to 133 percent of the poverty line, claiming that the law somehow “coerces” states into taking this new money. Roberts’ opinion buys this argument, holding that, because the states must accept Obamacare’s new Medicaid funds in order to continue receiving old Medicaid funds, that constitutes unconstitutional coercion.

One piece of good news is that Roberts distinguished the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion from previous expansions enough that his opinion probably would not lead to those past expansions being retroactively struck down. Another is that the opinion does not invalidate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion either. Instead, it says that conservative states are now free to take the new Medicaid funds or leave them without risking any of their old funds.

The upshot of this is that Rick Perry’s Texas can now decide that it would rather give the finger to Obamacare than provide health care to hundreds of thousands of its residents, even though the federal government will cover 90 percent or more of those costs. Doing so, of course, would be cruel; it would save Texas very little money; and it would probably be unpopular with many Texas voters. But Texas now has this option if it chooses.

In the long run, it is likely that Texas will eventually fall in line — just as every single state in the country eventually realized that the existing Medicaid program is a really good deal that they should agree to. While political fires are burning hot, however, many low income Texans (and Mississippians, and Oklahomans . . . ) are likely to suffer for it.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A leading Republican congressmen in the fight to repeal Obamacare said today’s Supreme Court ruling is “illegitimate” and has called for one of the Supreme Court Justices to be impeached.

ThinkProgress spoke with Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) outside the Court immediately following the decision today affirming the constitutionality of Obamacare. Gohmert, apoplectic over the ruling, directed his anger towards Justice Elena Kagan, who he claims likely “violated federal law” by voting on the Obamacare decision after serving as Solicitor General when the law was passed. “She needs to be removed from the Supreme Court,” he cried, calling for her impeachment. As such, Gohmert said today’s decision upholding Obamacare is “illegitimate.”

GOHMERT: We still have the issue of Justice Kagan. Either she was totally derelict and negligent in her duties as Solicitor General and had absolutely nothing to do with the most important bill to the president, her boss, or she did have something to do with it, she has violated federal law, and as such she needs to be removed from the Supreme Court. [...] I think it’s important to look at Justice Kagan for potential impeachment. [...]

KEYES: Considering she was the deciding vote in the case, does that leave the ruling illegitimate if she broke federal law?

GOHMERT: Yes it would. It would mean this decision would be illegitimate if she lied in order to get onto the Court.

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Steven Perlberg contributed to this report.

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