Recent weeks have seen the odd spectacle of conservatives cheering as the Supreme Court restricted the ability of Congress to cut federal spending on a welfare program. Even conservatives who criticized the Court’s Obamacare ruling overall have treated its holding on Medicaid as a win. Not so fast, I argue at Bloomberg View.
Jay Cost, in the Weekly Standard, calls the court’s move a “major victory for conservatives who cherish our system of dual sovereignty.” Michael Barone writes that the court has embraced “a principle that could work powerfully against big-government policies. Medicaid has been vastly expanded over the years in this manner. Now the court seems to be saying that that game is over.”
These hopes are very likely to be dashed. . . .