We’ve reached the stage where Obamacare is the punchline to a bad joke.
The law has been a disaster, both for the economy and for the Democratic Party. Not that we should be surprised. You don’t get better healthcare with a poisonous recipe of higher taxes, added government spending, and more intervention.
With any luck, Obamacare will be a textbook example of why we should never again give power to a bunch of political hacks and dreamy-eyed central planners.
Because when they try to buy votes and create more dependency with Rube Goldberg schemes, the results are…well, we seethe cluster-you-know-what of Obamacareunfolding before our eyes.
Not that anyone should be surprised. Remember what happened when politicians decided government would make housing more affordable?
And remember what happened when politicians decided government should extend American tax law into other nations?
Simply stated, grandiose plans for expanded government don’t end well.
But this isn’t a normal public policy issue.
The Obama Administration has just announced that it arbitrarily will be ignoring one of the requirements in the law, and this is the executive branch’s 18th unilateral change to Obamacare.
We have to ask whether the American political system is being corrupted by a White House that doesn’t feel bound by the rule of law.
To put it mildly, the Wall Street Journal is not impressed.
…the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law’s employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever. …last summer the
Treasury offered a year-long delay until 2015 despite having no statutory authorization. …Now the new delay arrives amid a furious debate about jobs after a damning Congressional Budget Office report last week, only this time with liberals celebrating ObamaCare’s supposed benefits to the job market. …Oh, and the Treasury also notes that, “As these limited transition rules take effect, we will consider whether it is necessary to further extend any of them beyond 2015.” So the law may be suspended indefinitely if the White House feels like it. …The text of the Affordable Care Act specifically says when the mandate must take effect—”after December 31, 2013″—and does not give the White House the authority to change the terms. Changing an unambiguous statutory mandate requires the approval of Congress, but then this President has often decided the law is whatever he says it is.
I admit that part of me wants Obamacare delayed as much as possible.
After all, even more jobs will be lost if the employer mandate is properly enforced, and that would add to an already anemic employment situation.
But America isn’t Argentina, or some other Banana Republic, where the law is based on the arbitrary and capricious decisions of some political thug.
At least it shouldn’t be.
If the President wants to change the law, he should propose legislation and send it to Congress.
But it’s obvious that isn’t happening. The White House understands that it would be forced to make concessions to get the changes it wants.
