we'll have your comments on the air. the president is scheduled to react to the health care ruling at a little past noon eastern time. about 45 minutes from now. 12:15 we're told. we're getting confirmation but shortly after that we expect to hear from mitt romney who is here in washington d.c. okay. let's go back to phone calls. tracy is a democrat waiting to speak. what's your reaction to today's ruling? >> caller: my reaction is one of sheer relief and i'm just ecstatic because my mother passed away of lung cancer it will be seven years on july 18th. she passed away with no health care insurance. she was $13 above the limit to receive medicaid here in ohio. she couldn't even qualify for a spend down program. she fought to appeal the decision for two years and that was before she even was

diagnosed with lung cancer. it was just when we found out she was type ii diabetes. i watched my mother pass away of something that could have been taken care of had she had some type of health care insurance. she could never afford to get all of her medications for her diabetes. she also had copd. she wasn't able to take proper care of herself because she had no health care insurance so i am celebrating this victory today in memory of my mother. hopefully nobody will have to see their loved ones go through what i watched my mom go through and hopefully no one will have to fight as hard as my mom fought to get coverage for themselves and their families. i just want to thank the supreme court. today is a great day for us to be americans and i just hope we

keep moving forward. >> tracy from ohio. our next comment comes from william who is an independent and on the line right now. where are you calling from william? >> caller: from los angeles. >> you're on. go ahead. >> caller: thank you. first the critique and then the possibility. the upholding of what should be called oromney care strengthens the works of both wings of our corporate state known as the democrats and republicans. it strengthens the abusive and coercive state of the democrats and the predatory and weaponized corporatism of the republicans by further asserting that the federal government has a right to the people's labor basically uphold the income tax which was 1913 the same year that money

creation powers were transferred from the national government to international financiers and the other side of it is that it forces people to buy it from the corporations, which the republicans love. we have to think out of the box right here. the american people should see this as what they're going to get if they continue to vote for their oppressors in both parties. instead we should have a system of trust. we should have a national health trust and we should have the possibility of a supercooperative at the national, state and local levels and we have to also look at what health care really is. there's been a weaponization of our food through genetic manipulation of seeds. >> i'm going to jump in. you had an opportunity to make your case against the approach to health care in washington. thank you very much for being part of our conversation today. let me introduce you to our next voice joining us from up on

capitol hill. michael doyle, the supreme court correspondent. were there indications during oral argument of the direction the chief justice would be going? >> not to me. the decision to base the upholding of the individual mandate on the taxing provision was not heavily discussed at oral argument. two hours of argument on the mandate essentially and most of the focus was on the commerce clause and its lack of power. >> have you had time to spend time with the decisions? >> i have. it's about an inch thick. i looked through it as best i can in speed reading mode. >> what stands out to you? >> well, one was the way that chief justice roberts thread the needle here. he upheld the law in the most conservative way possible. the four liberal justices would have upheld individual mandate under the commerce clause which is expansive and justice roberts

says that's going too far. you can't compel activity. however, he was able to find the power of congress to lay taxes and use that as justification to uphold the law. it kept the fairly conservative in the lower c sense assessment of the court's role which is to not strike down a law unless absolutely necessary. >> he was not able to convince his conservative colleagues to join him in that interpretation. >> no surprise there. the four conservative justices scalia, and others have been seen as skeptics about the law and that was no surprise. justice kennedy was in the minority. that might have been a little bit of a surprise. i might have thought justice kennedy would have at least potentially joined the chief on this one. >> it is challenging at this really early time to understand the implications of rulings.

the fact that the taxation was used as a rationale, does that have any implication for future legislation? >> well, yes. every court ruling has ripples you can't see for years to come. first, the fact that the court did not use the commerce clause to either uphold or strike down the law is very significant because had they done so, it would have -- had they used the commerce claws use to uphold th law, the reverse would have been true. the fact that it was upheld under the taxing provision is fairly narrow in a sense. it's a sweeping ruling but the justification is narrow and it will guide perhaps in a contradicting fashion congress's future ability to frame up legislation of this kind. >> understanding that all of this is complex and that no one

has had much time, i want to have you help the audience understand. those who are following know that there were four different arguments held on this. first anti-injunction act and that had to do with the matter of whether or not this was taxation. how does that figure into the ultimate decision by the court today? >> the anti-injunction act dates back to the 19th century and says essentially you can't file suit against a tax until a tax has been imposed and in this case the tax penalty for those that don't buy insurance doesn't get kicked in for a couple of years. the obama administration said this is not a tax. it's a penalty. the anti-injunction act doesn't apply. the court majority agreed. and then the court says even though it's not called a tax for the purpose of anti-injunction act, it's close enough to a tax to uphold it under the taxing power. and the minority in their

dissent calls out the seeming contradiction. >> i'm scratching my head a bit listening to you with the explanation. >> i'm scratching my head too to tell the truth. the threshold question for the court was whether it was premature to consider the challenges to the law. the argument that it was premature that it was a tax and the tax hadn't been imposed yet. the court in just a few pages dismissed that argument but then returned to the definition of a tax in order to uphold the law. there will be a lot of people chewing over that particular contradiction in the days to come i would guess. >> so now the court closes out this term. any summary comments looking back on this term overall for the supreme court? >> i'm desperately looking for a term for landmark. it met its hype.

it had rulings on immigration law. striking in part health care. underappreciated case issued earlier today prior to health care strikes down a federal law that makes it a crime to lie about military heroism. an important first amendment case. the court looked at indecency on broadcast airwaves. what will be fun in the coming days is to go back now across the 75 or 80 cases that have been decided and try to see the common ground and see how the coalition has shaped up or broke apart. >> thank you very much, michael doyle, for helping people understand what truly has been quite an interesting day for people all across the country. a lot of people who are reading tea leaves got this one wrong. and we appreciate you putting some analysis to what happened there today. thank you so much for your time. >> my pleasure. >> we'll go back to telephone calls. next is a call from florida.

this is michael who is a democrat. >> caller: thank you for taking my call this morning. first of all, i'm glad that this happened. i'm an insulin dependent diabetic and have been for almost 42 years. i just yesterday lost my job. i've had no health care. this is going to assist that. i think the important comment and i think i would agree with senator harkin. if congress brought their tool kits to the table initially to create this situation in a bipartisan way, we wouldn't have had to bring the sledgehammers to try to tear it down and have our supreme court chief justice be the umpire to call a play safe on a fast pitch to home plate, if you will, politically that required his decision. there's one more side of this

that we need to explore. that is the actual cost that we're spending on health care. until we bring that in mind, as dr. tim johnson said on abc news, that's our key priority right now is reducing cost. we can reduce cost by bringing services within line. going for health first instead of health care after. >> michael, thanks so much. we're monitoring members of congress tweets in reaction to this. let me share two with you. both female house members and on opposite sides of the aisle. first one, louise slaughter, i'm pleased it was upheld today. we'll take a call and after that we'll show you a republican house member who came to this congress after working as a nurse and what her reaction is. let's listen to youngsville, north carolina. this is louis.

a republican. >> caller: good morning. i'm so glad to get through. i am a retired registered nurse. i worked in nursing until i was 69 years old. this is a terrible, terrible bill. i have watched health care decline over the past -- i would say 30 years. and for people who were calling in who think now they're going to get really cheap health care, they need to know health care programs such as medicare do not pay the doctor's bill. somehow they think that they're going to get free care and if they do, they're not going to like it. it will be in a clinic. it will be the kind of care that people get in england. this is only half of having insurance or having a way to pay for health care is only half of the problem. the other half of the problem is

can you force doctors to accept whatever payment you have for care? can you force a doctor to accept you as a patient? you cannot. doctors are just the same as a private business person and they can accept whatever patients they want or don't want. >> thank you for your call. on the line with us right now is senator johnny isaacson. senator isaacson has been an outspoken critic of the health care law. senator, what's your reaction to the court's ruling today? >> i'm disappointed in the ruling but i support the court. we have a lot of work to do. there have been waivers issued already. it doesn't go into effect until january 1st of 2014. we have a lot of work to do to create the flaws and problems in

the law to try to make it better. >> your reaction to chief justice being the deciding vote. >> i have high regard and respect for him. from what i understand he based his decision on the fact that congress is authorized by the constitution of the united states to levy taxes and mandate to buy insurance is levying of tax on those individuals. he used what is constitutional authority to uphold the affordable care act. >> your reaction to that? >> that's his job. i'm not a constitutional lawyer and i'm not an attorney. when i read the statements on the opinion and saw what happened i realized what we were focusing on was the commerce clause which clearly this law was a violation of but that it authorizes congress to levy taxes it's under that basis he

upheld it as constitution. >> you say that congress has a lot of work to do to shape the law. does that begin in your estimation with an effort to totally repeal? >> we would be better off to repeal and replace and do it step by step basis. there are many things in the law that are very popular like keeping children on policies until you're 26 years old and pre-existing condition. republicans have great proposals in the health committee when we did the negotiation or tried to do the negotiation on our version of the health care bill when it was written up. we weren't successful. we would like to get back to the floor of the senate and house and make those changes more appropriately. >> on both sides of capitol hill, the leaders have spoken about the need to repeal. in fact, eric cantor announced a vote on the house side on july 11th for repeal. do you believe there are enough votes for repeal? >> i haven't counted them so i don't know. i would imagine there probably are in the house. the senate may be a different

matter because of the breakdown of republicans and democrats. there is no question alone justified by the administration's countless waivers issued to sebelius that there are many problems with legislation and you probably are better off to start with a clean slate and incorporate those things that may be good but also take the things that are so bad and for health care and bad for american people and get those changed. >> let me conclude with a question about politics. handicap this decision and the fall elections if you will, senator. >> i have said before the decision was rendered that whatever the decision is, it will probably be the major focus of the election in november unless there's some catastrophic event, a terrorist attack or something like that. i think that will be the case. particularly with this decision and with the degree of unpopularity publicly with the affordable care act, i think it will dominate the presidential election. >> senator, thanks for giving

c-span some of your time. appreciate it. >> thank you very much. >> the senator has been active of criticism of the health care law since it was passed. we'll continue our coverage here. we have word that the president will be speaking at 12:15. just a little less than a half hour from now. later on today, mitt romney and of course throughout the day members of congress and others who are commenting on their reaction to the upholding of the health care law. i mentioned earlier that one member of the republican house leadership, diane black, who came to congress as a health care nurse is using facebook for her comment. she writes the supreme court flawed decision is a gross interpretation of the congress's taxes responsibility under the constitution. one thing this decision does not change is the need for obama care to be repealed immediately. and we'll take a telephone call. next is charlotte, north carolina. you are on, matt. a republican there. >> caller: how are you doing

today? >> fine, sir. what's your reaction to the decision, please? >> caller: i only have a very short comment and that is that i am an insulin dependent diabetic as well. my insurance covers my insulin for 30 bucks but you can go to walmart and buy generic insulin for 24 bucks. so i won't really see what the people who are democrats side with legitimacy of their argument is. the problem that i have is this is a problem principle and that is now that we are being taxed for existing and i find it kind of suitable that the democratic party, party of slavery, would make us slaves to government again. thank you very much. >> next up a call from houston. this is -- first, we'll listen to houston, brandon, who is an independent there. brandon, go ahead, please.

>> caller: my only comment really has to do with how chief justice john roberts masterfully wrote his opinion based on the actual law that was written for affordable care act. he did a great job of that in making a good argument that can't be found to be infallible. however, i think that congress went the wrong way with trying to get americans to have better coverage by imposing a tax penalty. if they want to make a better effort by making sure americans had coverage, they would have had a public option or extended medicare or medicaid instead of imposing a tax penalty for people who are not exempt from this. that's my only real comment. >> thanks so much for joining outside discussion here on c-span networks on the supreme court's review of the health care law today. we'll be here throughout the day. you can also find our website. we're streaming this network and we have a full decision posted online. we are aggregating tweets from

members of congress, reporters and the public on the health care ruling. lots of information there on c-span.org if you want to dig deeper into what happened in the court today. on the line with us is a democrat from oregon. the founder in congress of the noroscience caucus. you will recall his home state of oregon has a death with dignity act which is physician-assisted suicide and he joins us by phone. first of all, your overall reaction to the court's decision. >> well, i'm obviously pleased. it was a cornerstone of being able to move forward with health care reform. it appears as though the act is largely intact and we can shift now with this cloud of uncertainty having been lifted to be able to deal with implementation. i mean, it's exciting for me to see how much of the health care community is already committed

to doing business differently and this is going to be another boost to make that possible. >> we have been getting a number of tweets from people, obviously, supporters of universal health care who believes this codifies the position of insurance companies in the united states and what's your reaction to that? >> well, i think it's simply allows the federal government discretion to be able to step up and make a difference with reform, and you have the opportunity to not just deal with health care insurance and there's also significant expansion. as you know, dealing with medicaid and there are a number of opportunities to change the way medicine is practiced. to reward value instead of volume. i think these fundamental changes are very important and

i'm -- and there's not anything in the near-term that's going to change the central role. >> you may have heard that the majority leader in the house is scheduled a july 11th vote on repeal. how do you see that playing out. they've been doing this since they assume its power. they've been chipping away at every juncture, trying to put sand in the gears, trying to erode in ways large and small, trying to prevent the resources to implement it. this is going to be one more, and it's not going to pass the senate that would be vetoed by the president and it will avoid dealing with the fundamentals of health care reform. it would be interesting if they had something that was actually positive. the only thing they have offered up would have made vifrtually n

difference and this is a series of election-year charades that are going through and the good news is because this decision, we'll be able to continue with the health care reform process in my state of oregon, the federal government has made a $1.9 billion bet that we can use this tool to reduce the cost of health care going forward. we're excited about it. we think we're going to be able to deliver on this promise. >> thank you very much, congressman from oregon and now mitt romney's reaction. >> as the last day in session, i will do on my first day if elected president of the united states and that is i will act to repeal obamacare. let's make clear that we understand what the court did and did not do. what the court did today is say that obamacare did not violate the constitution, what they did not say is that it was good law or good policy. obamacare was bad policy

yesterday. it's bad policy today. obamacare was bad law yesterday. it's bad law today. let me tell you whyy say that, obamacare raises taxes on american people by approximately $500 billion, obamacare cuts medicare -- cudds medicare by approximately $500 billion and even with those tax increases obama care adds trillions to the national debt and pushes those obligations on to coming generations. obamacare means that for up to 20 million americans they will lose the insurance they currently have, the insurance that they like and want to keep. obamacare is a job killer. businesses across the country have been asked what the impact is of obamacare. three-quarters of those surveyed by the chamber of commerce says

it makes it less likely for them to hire people and most troubling of all, obamacare puts the federal government between you and your doctor. for all those reasons it's important for us to repeal and replace obamacare. what are some of the things that we'll keep in place and must be in place in a reform in the health care system. one, we have to make sure is people that want to keep their current insurance will be able to do so. having 20 million people up to that number of people lose the insurance they want is simply unacceptable. number two, got to make sure that those people that have pre-existing conditions know that they will be able to be insured and they will not lose their insurance. we also have to assure that we do our very best to help each state in their effort to make sure that every american has access to affordable health care and something that obamacare does not do and must be done in real reform is helping lower the cost of health care and health

insurance. it's becoming prohibitively expensive. and so this is now a time for the american people to make a choice. you can choose whether you want to have a larger and larger government, more and more intrusive in your life, separating you and your doctor, whether you're comfortable with more deficits, higher debt to be passed on to the coming generations, whether you're willing to have the government put in place a plan that potentially causes you to lose the insurance that you like or whether, instead, you want to return to a time when the american people will have their own choice in health care, where consumers will be able to make their choices as to what kind of health insurance they want. this is a time of choice for the american people. our mission is clear. if you want to get rid of obamacare we will have to replace president obama. my mission is to make sure we do exactly that. that we return to the american people the privilege they've always had in the way they live their lives in the way that's most appropriate where we don't pass on massive deficits and

debt. where we don't have a setting where jobs are lost. if we want good jobs and a bright, economic future for ourselves and for our kids we must replace obamacare. that is my mission. that is our work, and i'm asking the people of america to join me. if you don't want the course that president obama has put us on, if you want instead the course that the founders envisioned and then join me in this effort, help us. help us defeat obamacare. help us defeat the liberal agenda that makes government too big, too intrusive and killing jobs across this great country. thank you so much. candidate mitt romney here in washington today, just a few blocks away from our offices and right across from the capitol on constitution avenue in washington, d.c., with his reaction to the supreme court's ruling on the affordable care act. now to capitol hill, more press with statements. these are from gop members of the house. let's listen in.

>> support sunglasses for dogs! sunglasses for dogs, congresswoman! >> thank you. i'm congressman john micah from florida. it's been said the power to tax is the power to destroy and today a lot of destruction was destroyed by this decision. i'm concerned about two things. first, the impact on our senior citizens. this is probably the most devastating blow to american senior citizens who will have half a trillion dollars cut from medicaid, medicare and they will also limit the choices of our seniors both for care and also their choices as far as freedom in this country which individual freedom is being destroyed not only for our seniors, but also for our citizens under this decision. the second thing, as a business person, this is a death deal for

business in this country. small business has been reeling from just the thought of this going into effect. today's decision will do more to hurt our economy than anything we could do in washington, and the statehouses or across this country. so this is a bad day for business and it's a bad day for senior citizens and it's a bad day for america and congress needs to repeal this now! >> i want to thank the members who are just a small sample of the tea party caucus in congress. they're all engaged in many things and they're all reacting to this unprecedented decision, but there are just a few things that we want to say. as a result of the president's trillion-dollar stimulus program