good afternoon. i'm chuck todd. it's tuesday, march 27th, 2012. >> this is the day that we have been waiting for. >> we love obamacare. >> change is health care reform that we passed after a century of trying. >> i am completely opposed to the obamacare mandate on individuals. i am for individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.

>> the government can tell people that, where's the line of what they could not tell people? >> you want to call it obamacare, that's okay because i do care. >> i know some people say, gee, your massachusetts health care plan isn't conservative. yes, it is. >> this is exactly the model of obamacare. >> i won't worry too much about what rick is saying these days. >> declare this law unconstitutional. >> it's right for the united states of america. >> our special coverage is continuing this afternoon here at the supreme court. as justices consider the 800-pound gorilla in the health care reform law. the mandate. at issue today, is the government within its rights to mandate insurance coverage for all, distributing the costs of covering some 30 million uninsured, or is it beyond federal powers to order citizens to buy a commercial product they may not want. and early on in the arguments,

it was justice scalia who brought in the slippery slope question. if the government can make you buy insurance, why not say vegetables? >> everybody has to buy food sooner or later. so you define the market as food. therefore everybody is in the market. therefore you can make people buy broccoli. >> no. that's quite different. >> that was the tone, justices showing skepticism about the constitutionality of this mandate. to judge from the court watchers who were there for the arguments today, they seemed to say this law could be in big, big trouble. our big court watcher, of course, is nbc news correspondent pete williams. and pete, you've been quoted a lot today saying that everything you saw and heard in the supreme court today tells you the mandate could be in trouble. >> you know, sandra day o'connor used to say, whats the most

important thing? counting to five, she would say. who are the five votes who would vote to uphold. this you can assume that the four more liberal members are inclined to support it. and i think you can assume that the four more conservatives are not. we got a little answer to that today from justice scalia. there was some thought that because he had voted to, in the past, to a very broad commerce clause power. perhaps he was a gettable vote today. it became quite clear he was not. it all comes down to justice kennedy. and of course, it is impossible to predict what the court will do today. three months from the time they write the final decision. what they think right now is sort of irrelevant. but judging from what was said during the oral argument, justice kennedy set the bar very high when he said at the beginning, if you're going to change the relationship between the government and an individual, don't you have a very heavy burden? and almost until the very end of the argument, he sort of signals that he never got an answer that was satisfactory to him. at the very end, chuck, em,

well, you know, maybe the health care market is different. maybe it's different than food and forcing people to buy broccoli. maybe there is something different about the health care market that would allow the government to do this. so there is a glimmer of hope there for the administration. we'll just have to see whether time brings him around. >> i want to ask you about, there was some sound. there is some arguments in questioning that justice roberts had of the other side that seems to also give the obama administration some hope that he was pretty skeptical of the argument against the mandate as well. >> pete? >> sorry. i thought we were going to hear something there. i wouldn't -- i think he was trying to be fair. i think he was trying to may the fair traffic cop today. in terms of how the arguments were characterized. but i wouldn't county justice roberts as a very likely vote for health care.

what the government lawyer was arguing here is, there is agreement from both sides that congress does have the power to force people, or to require people to buy insurance when they show up at the emergency room or when they go to the doctor's office. what the government says is, that's not practical. imagine how expensive insurance would be if you bought it at the entry counter when you went into the emergency room. so the government says all it's doing is shifting the time and requiring people to buy it earlier. what the conservatives were saying is, the problem there is, requiring not just people who want health care to buy insurance. but you're requiring everybody to buy insurance. whether they're going to go to the doctor's office or the emergency room in the next five years or not. >> pete william, i know you have more work to do for "nightly news" tonight. i want to head north now and get my partner, former partner in crime and our chief legal analyst. today co-host, savannah guthrie. i want to play the sound that

has some in the obama administration in panic mode. that is justice kennedy's questioning of the government's case. here it is. then you want to get your reaction. >> when you were the relation of the individual to the government in this, what we can stipulate is, i think a unique way. do you not have a heavy burden of justification to show authorization under the constitution? >> savannah, that seems to be the question that frankly does have some democrats that i'm hearing from almost in panic mode. >> yeah. there's no question that the sub text of what justice kennedy asked and justice alito and justice roberts. isn't there something different about what's going on here? are not you basically forcing individuals into the stream of commerce for the purpose of regulating them? and whether they said that outright as some justices did, or whether the questions indicated that's how they were at the case. that's lifted right out of the

brief of people opposing this law. that's how they've framed the issue. if you look at the oral arguments and the question that was asked, it does seem the justices are buying that view of it. the opponents of the law, the supporters were saying, look, we are regulating the health care economy. there's nothing to see here. the federal government clearly has the power to regulate things that are substantially affecting interstate commerce. this isn't a difficult case. what was clear from the questions today was that the justices don't necessarily see it that way. what justice kennedy is saying, there is something extraordinary about this. there is something almost unprecedented about this. and just in terms of tone, it seem like they're signing more on to the way the opponents of the law view the case than the supporters do. >> now, of course, there was one of these cases where the government's case was upheld and the government's rule was unconstitutional. at this point in time during the appeal court process, the government felt as if they were going to lose and this was the

one that was in the d.c. circuit. so how much of this tea leaf reading the dangerous? >> it's the perfect caveat to make. you can cite that. they were very conservative judges on the d.c. circuit. a very influential circuit who ruled on the constitutionality of this issue, who grilled government lawyers in oral argument and then ultimately these conservative judges were with the majority to uphold this provision. so when you look at the oral arguments and you look how tough the justices were on the government lawyers today, you don't necessarily know what the outcome is. when you look at the content of the question, you can see why the administration is worried. you can see why veteran court watcher like pete williams are saying, they may be pressed to find five votes. another example of the voting rights act a couple years ago. the government lawyer there was absolutely grilled. later the court upheld the voting rights act. i think the vote was something like 8-1. so it's always good to have that caveat. oral arguments are not always predictable of the eventual

outcome. sfr what you've read of the transcript and heard, was the government prepared today? >> well, you know, clearly they're prepared. all of these lawyers have been exhausting themselves with moot court and all the rest of it. so it is not like anybody showed sxum w up and was cramming for exams the night before. the conservatives justices, his own analogy of if the government can force you to buy insurance, can they force you to buy broccoli? can they force to you carry a cell phone so you can call 911? can they force to you buy burial insurance? what i was struck by, the government lawyer didn't seem to have a snappy or powerful, rhetorically any way, response to that saying there is a reason why regulating in the area of health care, forcing somebody to buy health insurance is different than those examples. that surprised me a little bit. >> we thought it was going to be wheat. instead it's brockly. it's all about food. savannah guthrie, this has been

fun this week going back and forth with you. >> good to see you. two more supreme court experts joining me now. thomas goldstein, attorney and co-founder of what has become must-read for a lot of us. and kevin russell, the editor of the blog. i want to pick up on this point of whether they were ready. >> i think he was ready. he may have not given the concise snappy answers that some of the adversaries were able to give. but ultimately, his difficulty is that they don't have great answers to some of the questions that are troubling some of the justices. it is a matter of substance rather than regulation. >> too much tea reading? >> it was a bad day for the government. when the five justices are looking for one vote and they're all giving you a hard time except for the one, you know you're behind the eight ball and you're struggling.

you don't know that you'll lose. i think it is more likely than not that the government will pull this one out. it will be closer than anybody thought. >> some of the justice that's are sympathetic to the government's case was trying to bail him out. let me give some sound for this. >> doesn't that seem a little bit, cutting the baloney thin? health insurance exists only for the purpose of financing herring. the two are explicably interlinked. >> the people who don't participate in this market are it much more expensive for the people who do. it is not your free choice just to do something for yourself. what you do is going to affect others. >> so those are the justices, kagan and ginsburg questioning

mr. clem who was arguing against the mandate. >> i thought they were typical of the kinds of questions you get from justices kagan and ginsburg. it wasn't really surprising that we were getting questions like that. on the other side, you have justice scalia trying to help out the other side when they didn't give the answer that he thought they should give. >> at the end there were some tough questions for mr. clement as well. what did you make of that? >> i don't think so. as pete suggested, i think john roberts in the enwas trying to make you are sure he was even hand and fair. mainly his questions to the plaintiffs, trying to invalidate the mandate was saying, what about the other side's argument? he wasn't embracing it in any way. >> given what happened to the government today, what appears to be a bad day for them, how now is the severability case tomorrow? that much more important than they thought? >> well, the government was hoping tomorrow would be an afterthought and wouldn't really amount to anything. particularly the morning argument about severability. the people who care the most tomorrow morning are the

insurance industry who are panic stricken of the idea of the mandate being gone. so the insurance pool won't rise. but at the same time still being stuck with the requirement that they provide all this coverage. >> thank you both. i think we'll be trying to check back in with you again before the end of the hour. i know you're busy. you've been life lines for us. thank you. both sides of the congressional aisle weigh in. >> he had a government mandated health care program in massachusetts. it required everybody to have it. it fined you if you did not. [ male announcer ] what if you had thermal night-vision goggles, like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence with minimal collateral damage. but rather than neutralizing enemies in their sleep, you'd be targeting stocks to trade. well, that's what trade architect's heat maps do. they make you a trading assassin.

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confronted, what can and what can't congress do in the name of promoting health care in america? >> everybody has to exercise. because there is no doubt that lack of exercise causes illness and that causes health care costs to go up. so the federal government says, everybody has to join a, an exercise club. >> doesn't that work, that work the way social security does? let me put it this way. congress in the '30s saw a real problem of people needing to have old age and survivors insurance. and yes, they did it through a tax. but they said, everybody has got to be in it. >> the essential question. here with me now, democratic congressman, peter welch of vermont and congress from

louisiana. thank you both for joining me. you were in there so let me start with you. what did you hear today that made you think, okay, now i know why i was against it and what did you hear today thinking, maybe it's more constitutional than i thought. >> the most striking thing i heard was from justice kennedy. when he said there's a high burden of authorization under the constitution if you're going to change the relationship between state and the individual. that struck me as a pretty strong statement. everybody is considering justice kennedy as the swing vote on the court. it really struck me that was a powerful statement in the direction of saying that this is not constitutional. >> congressman welch, answer that question. you have a high burden of proof on this. you're a member of congress. you voted for it. >> the supreme court has varied in its interpretation of thing over the course of the century. so who, this will be a 5-4

decision, most of us think. bottom line from a congressional standpoint interesting question for america is this. are we going to have a health care system that includes all americans? if we are, are we going to pay for it? if everyone is going to be covered, everyone has to painful i think justice ginsburg got it right. you can put it on a mandate or you can do it with a tax. and there can be a constitutional difference. the practical concern for the country has to be affordable and accessible health care for everyone. this is the first time we've had a bill on the floor that allows it to happen. >> congressman, i want you to answer a question. you would answer from a justice essentially. i'm going to play a piece of sound from justice breyer about what he believes is the power of congress on this question. >> i think if we look back into history, we see, sometimes, congress can create commerce out of nothing. that's the national bank which was created out of nothing to

create other commerce out of nothing. >> we know justice breyer seem to be sympathetic. >> it is a fact that congress has created commerce. at the same time, with regard to the specific example of the bank, it was also pointed out that congress could not compel every single american to put deposits into that bank. so it's not quite the same analogy. i want to get back to a point peter made earlier. that is, if everybody is in, we'll be able, the system will be more affordable. here's the problem with that. we have everybody in medicare and yet the cost of medicare is soaring and we can't afford that program as it is. and that's a set internal market, in a sense. we can't afford it. so we have other things we need to do in health care. more transparency. more competition. more efficient delivery of caring. those are things that are criticalally important.

>> charlie is right about that. however we finance health care, unless we have the cost of it be sustainable, instead of going up three times, one of my frustrations is that we're still having this fight about whether we'll have health care instead of the common effort of trying to figure out how to make it affordable and sustainable. >> let me ask the basic question. health care coverage, right or privilege? >> health care is a personal responsibility. i know that as a physician. i can be responsible for my health care. i don't think anybody else really can be. now, medical care is something different. and there were interesting arguments in the court today about what should be covered, how do you address this problem of catastrophic care for the young or old, for that matter. how do you deal with the 40 million who are uninsured. we could tailor solutions without doing this entire revamp of the system. >> right or privilege? >> it's a right but the

question, pro found as it is, is somewhat academic. in vermont and i'm sure in louisiana. you show up at the hospital. you show up to a doctor's office. you'll get health care. so as a practical matter, whether it is a right or privilege, the person who gets sick goes to a doctor, a hospital and gets it. the taxpayer picks up the tab. one of the challenges we have right now is that in your premium, about $1,000 of it is to pay for uncompensated care. so we've got this as a practical matter system where everybody gets it. and in this country, we're paying twice as much for health care as most of the industrialized nation and we still have 45, 50 million people uninsured. it's not working. >> i have to leave it there. >> stay with us. much more on the supreme court. and some other stuff coming up ahead. >> change the health care reform bill that we passed after a century of time that says if you get sick in america, you will not go bankrupt.

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there's no going back. see your lexus dealer. despite all the attention focused on the supreme court, will the oral arguments really move the justices one way or the other? does it all come down to the arcane legal ease buries in the thousands of pages buried in this case. ezra klein is a columnist for the "washington post." before i dig into that aspect of it, i saw your tweet. you were tough. you asked this interesting question. should the white house be wishing today that they had solicitor general elaine a kagan rather than justice elena kagan? >> i don't know the answer to that but by wide acclaim, i've read the arguments, the solicitor general did not do a very good job. i know these issues pretty well.

i found him hard to follow. it is funny to read the arguments. the liberal justices like breyer and ginsburg think this guy is not doing the job he needs to do and they begin butting in to make his arguments for him. so it is widely believed he did not represent the bill all that well. one of the justices is elena kagan who was barack obama's solicitor general. i don't know if she would have done a better or worse job. if he had chosen another pick for his second supreme court nominee, she might well still be his solicitor general and she would have been arguing the case today instead of sitting on the other side of the bench. whether or not the obama administration in the long run will wish she was there, it is anybody's guess. >> you know this point. i've heard it before from the white house. one of the reasons why president obama was persuaded to appoint elena kagan to the supreme court baltimore he thought she could become a downer weight behind

the scenes. do you buy that? >> i think it is a little overstated how much the justices really influence one another. the folks who are real experts i talked to say listen, scalia, kennedy, all these guys. and women for that matter. they are smart folks who have been legal minds for a very long time. they're not just waiting for somebody new to come in and change everything they think comfortable an elena kagan or sotomayor or scalia, that influence is on the margin. a lot of these folks come in with these big controversial cases on very well known topics alarmly knowing what they think. having read hundreds of thundershowe thousands of briefs. they try to be consistent with the issues. so-on any one justice or any one oral argument can do to change their mind on something controversial and high profile is fairly limited. >> let's go back to the subject matter at hand. and the presentation, how

concerned are, is the democratic legal community this afternoon? >> enormously. it was a complete face change from this morning. people went into the hearing saying, this will be fairly easy. it will be 7-2, 6-3 decision. it won't that be way anymore. i think pretty much everybody i've spoken to believes it will be much, much closer. i think a lot of folk are to some degree panicking. i think some guests you had earlier say they think the government will still pull this one out. oral arguments are not the be all, end all. but nonetheless, the individual mandates, the chances got a lot dimmer this morning. >> it was something that justice kennedy that people are happening their hats on at the end which is perhaps health care is different. so who knows. ezra klein, always a pleasure to talk to you. thank you. stay with us. today's top lines are coming up. there is only one candidate who has the chance of winning the republican nomination who

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from the steps of the supreme court to the campaign trail, it's been all about health care this week. almost. here are today's top lines including the hot mike. >> there's only one candidate who can make this a winning issue. that's trul santorum. >> i'm not going to worry too much about what rick is saying these days. when you fall further and further behind, you get a little more animated. >> the worst person to make that case is mitt romney. we're here today and he is not. >> quit distorting our words. if i see it, it's bull [ bleep ]. come on. what are you doing? >> you're a stefrt and you haven't taken on a new york time

reporter, you're not worth your salt. >> no new tax was required. >> talk about desperate and that a athleticic. >> we're talking about the whole world watching. >> you went to see "the hunger games." what did you think? >> government medicine and republicans didn't say boo. >> is the president suggesting if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be okay? because he wouldn't like like him? that's just nonsense. >> newt knows nonsense. may i remind you, he is still running for president. >> just do the he decent thing and pull out. ? why don't you do the d.c. enthing and not pester me. >> that is an laalarming and troubling development. he has thing he's not willing to tell the american people. this is our number one political foe. >> you can't start that a few months before a congressional race, when they've just completed elections in russia. >> for the president, i think it

is important that people not be critical of him or our country. >> that is obamacare. own obamacare. >> this is exactly the model of obamacare. >> i won't worry too much about what rick is saying these days. when you fall further and further behind, you get a little more animated. >> right to our political panel. with me now, the contributing editor with national review. and david corn for mother jones and political analyst. good day to you both. i want to go to the supreme court. we just heard something that animated both of you. speaker boehner saying don't criticize the president while he is overseas. mitt romney criticized the president while he was overseas. >> a blow for civility and an old-fashioned notion of politics. having said that, as you said, the flight is landing at 7:30. as the plane is getting close

enough, gets into u.s. air space, at that point you can begin to sound critical. at some point this is going to be hashed out. i'm not so sure the timing of it will -- >> what i want to talk about here is this fact that john boehner felt the need to very mildly but almost a way of without saying his name, rebuking romney. it was because romney made a big deal out of this. every campaign adviser, they signed an open letter to barack obama saying this is nefarious. romney himself mouthed off about it. >> from the hill yesterday that speaker boehner was not comfortable with this criticism. and i was interested today that he went public with it. >> it is. one of those things where john boehner and mitt romney have not got the closest of working relationships.

so i think we have the formation of the odd couple road movie. i think we can cross boehner off the veep list. >> and we know how much romney will want to be seen with congressional republicans. a mutual heisman society. let's go to what we heard today. david corn, i saw you earlier and you were like, wow, disaster for the democrats. and really, do you feel any differently over the last hour in. >> every report we hear, if you listen now, you can listen to the tapes of the oral argument made by the solicitor general indicates that he didn't do a very good job. he really botched some basic questions. like he had a rick perry moment. a legal oops. the obvious question was, if the government can do this, have the power to impose an individual mandate on health care, what kit not do? the conservatives saying can it make you eat broccoli? when it came to that question,

he seemed to falter. it was up to the justices to come in and give him some leading sges some ideas on what to say. because it is so basic, at that point he should have been able to hit it out of the park. so i have to imagine at the. the white house is very disappointed right now. >> not a trick question. not like one that you didn't know that one was coming. >> no. i've heard people say whether it was nerves, you got off on the right foot and couldn't seem to get back to it. one of the things i found striking about this. whenever you see this. there's always a danger that we're overinterpreting. the questions from the justices don't always indicate how they'll vote. i don't think there is anybody who watches oral arguments saying he did okay. >> the tea leaves are coming out of this. is that we're headed to another 5-4. shocker on one hand. on the other hand, can the country, there seem to be, there's been a lot of speculation that justice roberts doesn't want a 5-4. if kennedy will be the fifth vote for the government here, he

might say, he just thinks it is not good for the supreme court's reputation to have this political predictability. do you buy this argument? >> i think there are so many per mutations that we could spend an hour on that. then roberts would come in and vote with the majority, with kennedy, in order to gain control of writing the decision. this has happened in the past. there is a lot of politics in the court. and sometime a justice, a chief justice, will go with the side he is not most comfortable with to control the writing of the opinion. but you could end up, people forget. it doesn't have to be either/or. you could have a 3-3-3. there could be all sorts of decisions at the end of the day that we spend hours trying to interpret what the court said or men. >> a political question, the country enough to handle a 5-4? there seem to be a lot of -- you know this back and forth. >> if bush versus gore did not turn this country apart, i think

you see the public polling. a lot of americans beyond just the hard core republicans have a problem with the concept of the individual mandate. we have the footage of barack obama expressing skepticism and hillary in the 2008 primary campaign. i think what is interesting, what was the preeminent issue through the rise of the tea party. it might be more or less off the table. at least in 2012. at least in the form of should rerepeal obama care. it may end up being effectively repealed as it is. >> let's talk about, we thought it would impact and it hasn't as much. fubl presidential primary. we have a poll out of wisconsin from marquette. the law school there. a good poll that has romney up 8. we've seen this movie before. up about this number in one of these -- >> chugging up the hill. up a long, santorum behind. he is being spent. now i think the ratio is 6-1. >> we saw rick santorum right

behind us yesterday, making the case that he still can be the best republican while romney is the worst republican on this particular issue. the republican base obviously doesn't go along entirely with that. romney keeps winning. he is probably going to make it to the convention. but this is santorum's big argument. his big point of appeal and it is getting him part of the way there but not all the way there. and time is running out for him. >> jim, i'm curious, what was your take on the teem's okay ability to organize today. this wasn't two years ago. ? no. you can have a million people behind us and we're up to like two. but at that point, the justices are not supposed to take such things. what does this meet the standards of the constitution or not. having said that, i think a certain question of, does it matter? does this become, is there a point to bringing out lots of people to protest something like

this? the tea party did not unite behind one particular candidate. even at this moment, newt gingrich at that zoo was insisting he is still the real tea party candidate. >> does the nomination of mitt romney put a period at the end of the tea party movement in the republican party? >> not at all. just a question, it evolves, morphs, changes. >> i think it shows the tea party movement doesn't fully control the party although it has proved mitt romney far to the right. more so than he was as governor of massachusetts. the question is whether the tea party movement will keep him there or as it pulled him so far that he will have a hard he time building the bridges that he needs. >> we'll find out in the fall. thank you both. coming up, stay with us. much more ahead on what has been a busy day right here in washington. >> is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be okay? that's just nonsense. >> yes.

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i live on branson street, and i have something to say... [ male announcer ] aarp is bringing the conversation on medicare and social security out from behind closed doors in washington. because you've earned a say. trayvon martin's parents have just spoken on capitol hill before a house judiciary committee. their remarks came at a forum about racial profiling, federal hate crime laws and the stand your ground law that is at the center of the trayvon martin death and investigation and of course, subsequent controversy. we'll have the very latest on that. first the market wrap. >> chuck, thank you very much. stocks are raelg really basically little change today. the s&p and the dow are both struggling to stay above the flat line. and nasdaq is a little bit higher. one reason and one reason only.

that's because apple, yes, apple once again is up another $7 a share. the new all-time high for that company. the housing data not so good today. and consumer confidence taking a little bit of a breather there. that's probably why the equities are lower. that's your report from cnbc. we'll be right back. [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar, on december 21st, polar shifts will reverse the earth's gravitational pull and hurtle us all into space, which would render retirement planning unnecessary. but say the sun rises on december 22nd and you still need to retire, td ameritrade's investment consultants can help you build a plan that fits your life. we'll even throw in up to $600 when you open a new account or roll over an old 401(k). so who's in control now, mayans? [ male announcer ] for our families... our neighbors... and our communities... america's beverage companies have created a wide range of new choices.

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his 26 states challenging the president's health care law, no doubt. and attorneys jegeneral across e country are keeping an eye on the building behind me. six of those attorneys general were in the courtroom. alex joins me now. you said something earlier. you said they were afraid of passing the tax increase, so

it's massacquerading tax increa. would you have challenged it? >> i would have challenged it politically in the arena of congress, but legally it would have been much more difficult for us. they're trying to pass this thing. at the time a tax was politically infeasible for them. now it is constitutionally pragmatic for them to argue that it is a tax, but it's not a tax, and they're trying to rush it into the commerce authority, and it's simply not constitutional. >> i want you to react to something. i know you heard it, you were inside there, here's what justice briar said about congress and congress's power. here's what he said. >> i think if we look back into history, we see sometimes congress can create commerce out of nothing. that's the national bank which was created out of nothing to create other commerce out of nothing. >> what do you make of that argument? >> well, they did that under their commerce power, so it's a different argument. he's applying a different constitutional standard. >> what is it about this -- are

you concerned about a 5-4 decision, or do you think the country will be okay if there is a 5-4 decision, which it feels like, just tea leaf read, that's where we're headed one way or another. >> i just want a decision that strikes down the mandate and puts this back into congress. >> if the mandate is struck down, you think congress needs to rewrite the law because you do think there are some parts of the law that need to be protected? >> absolutely. i'm staying out of the critical side of it. i focus more on the constitutionality of the law, and that's what the ag's are doing in the supreme court right now. we just want to win. >> when it comes to this authority, and mostly where the states are concerned, it has to do with medicaid funding and the parts of this law that throw that there. what do you do? i mean, if you can't mandate somebody, but you have to still pay for it, how do you fix this part of it? i mean, you've run for office,

you've had constituents ask you this, how do you fix this part of it? >> as far as the medicaid portion? >> yeah. how do you deal with the fact that everybody is going to use the health care system? >> well, first off, the government made its argument over there in court today that this is a health care market. my concern is not with what will ultimately happen if everyone falls into that market. if you can define it as a health care market, then the government can regulate anyone who breathes, who eats. everybody will get old, everybody gets sick, so says the government. if the government can regular lalt the health care market, we're all in the health care market. i eat a greasy burger, my cholesterol goes up, i'm in the health care market. they have the power to regulate it. they have the power to create a military and then regulate it, but they do not have the power to regulate commerce. >> who pays for this? >> it shouldn't be paid for in a required mandate. that's a political question that should be debated in congress or

the states. it shouldn't be done this way through the commerce authority. you can't force someone into a contract they don't want to enter into. >> all right, thank you for joining me this afternoon. >> thank you. >> coming up, we'll be back with much more, including trayvon martin on capitol hill. twenty-five thousand mornings, give or take, is all we humans get. we spend them on treadmills. we spend them in traffic. and if we get lucky, really lucky, it dawns on us to go spend them in a world where a simple sunrise can still be magic. twenty-five thousand mornings. make sure some of them are pure michigan. your trip begins at michigan.org.

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simple to use websites, tools, and apps. for making your financial life a little bit easier. whose non-stop day starts with back pain... and a choice. take advil now and maybe up to four in a day. or choose aleve and two pills for a day free of pain. way to go, coach. ♪ trayvon was our son, but trayvon is your son. a lot of people can relate to our situation, and it breaks their heart just like it breaks mine. >> this is the mother, of course, of the slain trayvon martin. at a hearing that's ongoing on capitol hill right now, it began with a moment of silence for the

17-year-old florida man who was shot and killed one month ago. it's brought a federal investigation. luke russert was there. he joins me now. luke, this hearing, how much of it is about bringing more tension to this situation and how much of it is actually about trying to figure out is there something congress can do? >> well, it's primarily for attention. this is something done by the democrats, the house judiciary committee. it wasn't a hearing per se. it wasn't gavelled in with official witnesses, there's no official testimony. the democrats or the minority party usually does these types of things. what they're trying to do is put attention to racial profiling. the house judiciary committee, we usually hear from them around impeachments. this is primarily where you see questions of legality around elections and stuff, so it makes sense why you would see african-americans there.

and you're seeing those folks primarily and other democrats really trying to put attention on the issue of racial profiling that they felt has been sort of looked over in recent times and it now brought back to the forefront with trayvon martin. you see it in terms of federal involvement. t that's been sort of universal. speaker john boehner, a republican, said this morning that he's happy the department of justice got involved and thought it was appropriate. >> i have to leave it there. i'm running out of time. luke, thank you very much. the hearing is ongoing. thank you for watching. martin bashir will be back in the chair tomorrow. don't miss my show every day, the daily rundown, 6:00 p.m. >> thanks, chuck. like you, we are going to be focusing much of our fire power on the supreme court today. and the word of the day is mandate. the show starts