A Letter from Congressman Richard B. Nugent

Dear Mr. & Mrs. Granger,

Since the Supreme Court\’s ruling on the President\’s healthcare law a few weeks ago, a lot of people on both sides of the issue have asked about my reaction to it. It probably goes without saying at this point that I think the law was an enormous mistake from a policy standpoint – $800 billion in new taxes ($675 billion in the most recent estimates by the Joint Committee on Taxation plus roughly another $125 billion in taxes from their 2010 estimates of the individual mandate, employer mandate, and other revenues – likely to go up further), plus $500 billion in cuts to Medicare, zero done to control the growing costs in healthcare, etc – but setting aside the specific issue of health reform, my biggest concerns surround the ruling itself and the precedent it sets. These are issues that frankly, I think the media has a responsibility to make sure Americans are informed about.