GOP said Health Care reform violate constitutional..

GOP Senators Opt Out Of Brief Calling Health Care Reform Unconstitutional

WASHINGTON -- When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) filed a brief backing a court case challenging the constitutionality of health care reform, it was hailed as an important gesture of united GOP opposition to the president's signature domestic achievement. Notably absent from the list of signatories, however, were the names of nine of McConnell's Republican colleagues.

The Kentucky Republican filed the brief last week in federal court in Florida, arguing that the individual mandate portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is unconstitutional because it gives Congress too much power to regulate citizens' activities. Thirty-one fellow Senate GOPers joined him. The rest did not.

"Where, as in this case with respect to the PPACA's Individual Mandate, Congress legislates without authority, it damages its institutional legitimacy and precipitates divisive federalism conflicts like the instant litigation," argues the senators in the brief. "The long term harms that the PPACA may do to our governmental institutions and constitutional architecture are at least as important as are the specific consequences of the PPACA."

Explanations for the abstainers range from the obvious to the speculative. Among the list are three members who will not be in the body next year. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) is retiring and has shown little willingness to get too political in his final weeks and months. The same could be said of Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), though when asked why he hasn't joined the rest of his GOP colleagues, the New Hampshire Republican's office was comically mute.

"We are not going to be able to talk about that," said Otto Heck, a spokesman for the senator. Why not? "We just aren't going to talk about that."

Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who was defeated in his efforts to win the Republican nomination this cycle, has also abstained from the suit. But removal from office isn't likely the driving reason. The Utah Republican authored a bill in 2007 that was based around the individual mandate -- a legislative venture that proved, in the end, to be a key contributor to his downfall.

That bill, the Healthy Americans Act, was co-sponsored by two other Republican senators who have, to date, declined to participate in the suit challenging the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality: Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). Neither Alexander nor Graham's office returned a request for comment.