Romney defends states’ right to mandate

By Alicia M. Cohn, The Hill

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney defended government mandates Tuesday night, in the process revealing some similarities to his primary competition for the GOP nomination.

“The government of course has a lot of mandates,” Romney told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. “I know folks don’t like that. Mandates that kids go to school, mandates that you have to have auto insurance if you have an automobile. My conservative friends say, ‘Well, we don’t have to have automobiles.’ And it’s like, well, what state do you live in? Of course you have to have automobiles in this nation.”

Discussion over government-imposed mandates has raged in recent GOP presidential debates. Romney’s campaign has faced a major challenge over the healthcare insurance individual mandate he implemented in Massachusetts as governor, which has been compared to President Obama’s healthcare reform bill.

In defending his state’s healthcare bill, Romney said the so-called “ObamaCare” bill was “unconstitutional” while the Massachusetts law was not “because there are two different constitutions.”

Romney’s fellow White House contender, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), is also taking heat over a mandate he imposed as governor that required all sixth-grade girls to be vaccinated for the sexually transmitted Human Papillomavirus.

To read more, visit:  http://thehill.com/video/campaign/181453-romney-defends-states-right-to-mandate

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