CARRIE SEVERINO: Senate GOP Jobs Bill Contains a Landmine for Federalism.

Among other things, S.197 sets a statute of limitations for claims, caps damages and creates standards for expert witnesses. These may sound like great ideas, but they are not within the constitutional powers granted to the federal government for the very same reasons Obamacare is not.

The law’s own justification for its constitutional authority should be chilling to anyone committed to limited federal power. The bill’s findings state that health care and health insurance are industries that “affect interstate commerce,” and conclude that Congress therefore has Commerce Clause power to regulate them — even when it involves an in-state transaction between a doctor and patient, governed by in-state medical malpractice laws. Is there any industry that couldn’t be found to have an effect on interstate commerce? The agriculture and manufacturing industries, long considered the paradigmatic areas not covered by the Commerce Clause, certainly fall under federal power under this broad analysis.

Yeah, that’s a problem, as I’ve noted here before. If you’re going to oppose ObamaCare as outside of Congress’s enumerated powers — and you should — then at the very least, you shouldn’t commit your own enumerated-powers violations in the same freaking area.

Randy Barnett calls the Republicans supporting this FINOs, for Federalists In Name Only. Back in 2002, I was criticizing Republicans for Fair-Weather Federalism, and the problem continues.