DeMint says a rejected law would be a well-deserved loss for Obama. | John Shinkle/POLITICO DeMint warns of high court 'slap in the face'

Sen. Jim DeMint said the Supreme Court will deliver a “well-deserved slap in the face to the president and the Congress” if it strikes down the 2010 health care law.

In an interview for the POLITICO video series “ SCOTUS & Health Care: The Final Countdown,” the archetypal South Carolina conservative — who said in 2009 that health care reform could be President Barack Obama’s “Waterloo” — argued that Congress and Obama overstepped their bounds in writing the law and that the court could send a powerful message that they need to scale back their ambitions.


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“If the court throws it out, I think it’s a well-deserved slap in the face to the president and the Congress to make us think that what we’re here for is to honor our oath of office, which is the pledge to defend the Constitution, which limits what we can do,” DeMint said.

“I think it could be the best thing that could ever happen to this Congress, where we might sort through again what it is that we’re really supposed to do instead of trying to run energy and transportation and health care and banking and all the aspects of the American economy,” he said.

Like most Republicans, DeMint believes the whole law should be scrapped regardless of whether the court strikes it down. But taking a more controversial stance, he argued fellow Republicans shouldn’t rush to replace even the most popular of provisions if they are struck down.

That even goes for the guarantee that children can stay on their parents’ insurance plans up to the age of 26, a benefit Democrats frequently cite as a reason to keep the law in place and one that is supported by some Republicans. DeMint, who wrote about that provision in a newsletter for Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee, said it’s a bad idea.

“If we keep people on the plans 26, 30 years old, it encourages people not to get their own health care; it gives them time to develop health conditions that might make it harder for them to get their health care in the future,” he said. “It just is not a smart thing to do, to build the system on a group plan idea, on a family plan, when what we need is individuals to have their own plans, regardless of their age.”

So what should Republicans do if the law gets struck down? Hold hearings, DeMint said — and that’s it for now.

“We should not make the mistake of trying to do something immediately. What we need to do is have a lot of hearings. We need to look into what’s the proper way to move toward individually owned health plans, not to discourage employers from offering plans but to make sure that every individual can get a plan that they can own and keep, whether it’s from their employer or from the open market,” he said.

DeMint is a prominent player in Senate politics, both in the institution and on the campaign trail. Through his Senate Conservatives Fund, he has worked to nominate conservatives in Republican Senate primaries and get them elected, giving him a cadre of protégés who espouse similar views on a wide range of topics. That has helped him build influence through the conservative-dominated Republican Steering Committee, which he chairs.

DeMint’s opposition to the body and spirit of Obama’s health care law doesn’t mean he lacks ideas for how to improve the U.S. health care system. For example, he said, lawmakers could consider giving individuals the same tax breaks for health insurance that employers get, and they could allow insurers to sell slimmed-down health plans across state lines.

“These things do not cost the taxpayers any money, but they are things that we could be ready to do as we move into next year, but we shouldn’t do it in a hurry. We should be more thoughtful,” DeMint said. “It should not be 2,700 pages. It should be a step-by-step approach where we continuously improve the best health care system in the world.”

On a political level, DeMint disagrees with Republicans who think the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, might be better off politically if the court leaves the law in place and gives him the ability to run on repealing it.

“Well, politically, it’s just much better to get this thing done and to prove that the Democrats and the president were wrong in trying to force this down the throat of the American people,” he said. “It was unconstitutional. We told them it was unconstitutional. If the courts throw it out, I think it’s a great victory for America. So, we should consider it a political victory for the Republicans.”