APNewsBreak: SC Attorney General set to sue on health care deal

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Top prosecutors in South Carolina and Florida said Friday they are ready to sue if health care reform legislation passes this weekend as expected.

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said he and Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum will file a federal lawsuit challenging the bill’s constitutionality.

“We are ready to kill it,” McMaster said. “When the national government and Congress start going wild, it’s up the states to rein them in.”

The U.S. House plans to vote on the plan Sunday. McMaster and McCollum will argue that it violates state sovereignty because it requires that all Americans have some form of health insurance. …

“It’s essentially a direct tax on the people for which there is no authority,” McMaster said. “It’s the national government requiring a citizen to buy something that he may or may not want to buy. There’s no authority in the Constitution that allows the Congress to do that.” …

“Like all of these people, I swore an oath to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution and the constitution of South Carolina,” McMaster said. “It is difficult to understand how the president and the Congress can believe that this is constitutional. It is harmful, and that’s why we’re going to kill it.”