June 5, 2013 4:58PM # Movement to Ban Economic Mandates Grows By [Ilya Shapiro](https://www.cato.org/people/ilya-shapiro) --- SHARE Earlier this year, I [wrote](https://www.cato.org/blog/new-constitutional-amendment-would-abolish-obamacares-mandate-tax) about Rep. Steven Palazzo’s (R‑MS) proposed constitutional amendment whose entire text reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law that imposes a tax on a failure to purchase goods or services.” So this would abolish Obamacare’s individual mandate “tax.” Now we have movement in the Senate on this idea, with Marco Rubio (R‑FL) [introducing](http://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=922d33f4-68ba-487d-a795-4e7106ded4a3) the exact same language, calling it the “Right to Refuse” Amendment. Anyone who opposes this amendment wants the government to have the power to tax people for not buying something—whatever that something is: an electric car, dental floss, a gun, or broccoli. It wasn’t clear until *NFIB v. Sebelius*, of course, whether the government constitutionally had this power—and Obamacare itself (as opposed to Chief Justice Roberts’s legislative rewrite) wasn’t written this way. Obamacare *delenda est*. ##### Related Tags [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).