Kevin Dietsch/Reuters
- Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sidestepped a question from Sen. Kamala Harris on whether she knew President Donald Trump was seeking to nominate a justice who would strike down the Affordable Care Act.
- “I don’t recall seeing or hearing those statements,” Barrett said.
- Trump previously said he wanted a justice who would strike down the landmark healthcare law.
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Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett sidestepped a question from Sen. Kamala Harris on whether she knew President Donald Trump was seeking to nominate a justice who would strike down the Affordable Care Act.
“I don’t recall seeing or hearing those statements,” Barrett said.
Barrett’s statement was in response to Harris asking if she was aware that Trump had tweeted: “Obamacare will be replaced with a MUCH better, and FAR cheaper, alternative if it is terminated in the Supreme Court. Would be a big WIN for the USA!”
That tweet was published on September 27, a day after Trump announced Barrett’s nomination to the Supreme Court.
Barrett has previously voiced criticism of the Affordable Care Act.
In 2017, Barrett slammed Chief Justice John Roberts, who in 2012 joined the Supreme Court's four liberal-leaning justices in a vote to uphold the Affordable Care Act, saying he "pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute."
At the time, Barrett said of Justice Roberts: "He construed the penalty imposed on those without health insurance as a tax, which permitted him to sustain the statute as a valid exercise of the taxing power; had he treated the payment as the statute did — as a penalty — he would have had to invalidate the statute as lying beyond Congress's commerce power."
Much of the consternation around Barrett's nomination to the court stems from concerns that the deeply conservative judge could be the deciding vote that strikes down the Affordable Care Act, potentially disenfranchising untold numbers of Americans who benefit from its protections for those with preexisting medical conditions.
Trump has been vocal about his disdain for the healthcare law signed by his predecessor, the former President Barack Obama, and has frequently promised that Republicans would deliver an alternative.
Nearly four years into his first term as president, Trump has not yet revealed what that alternative might be.
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