House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) disputed an assessment by a top legal analyst that the Supreme Court case has been a "train wreck" for backers of the Obama healthcare reform law.
"The justices are going to have to reflect upon the issues here and they'll meet in a joint session with one another and discuss it, so I think it's way too early [to declare that] it's a train wreck or that this case is over," Hoyer said Wednesday on CNN.
His comments came a day after Jeffrey Toobin, a legal expert who writes for the
New Yorker, said
the law was in "grave, grave trouble" and described the case as a "train wreck" for the administration after the second day of hearings, which focused on the individual mandate.
Hoyer joined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in disagreeing with that assessment.
"I think that this matter will be resolved, that the mandate is, in fact, constitutional and this bill will go forward," Hoyer added.
Toobin's assessment seemed to derive from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's questioning of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli on Tuesday. At one point during the arguments Kennedy, the likely deciding vote on the constitutionality of the law, said there seemed to be a "very heavy burden of justification" for certain parts of the law.
Following Toobin's comments on Tuesday, Reid said that Kennedy's questioning didn't necessarily indicate the reform legislation is doomed.
"I’ve been in court a lot more than Jeffrey Toobin and I had arguments, federal, circuit, Supreme Court and hundreds of times before trial courts,” Reid said. “And the questions you get from the judges doesn’t mean that’s what’s going to wind up with the opinion."
