July 8, 2013 (FRC) – Back in May, House Republicans started a Twitter contest to see who could describe ObamaCare in three words. The White House silenced everyone by tweeting: “It's. The. Law.” Well, somebody ought to remind the administration of that, as the President's team announced at the beginning of a holiday week that it was putting the brakes on another key component of his signature policy.
With Congress already home firing up the barbeque, the two agencies most central to ObamaCare's implementation dropped the bombshell that the President was pushing off the employer mandate until 2015. One of the most controversial parts of the health care law, this mandate slaps businesses with 50 or more employees with a $2,000 fine for every full-time employee that it doesn't insure with a government-approved plan.
Up until last Tuesday, companies were bracing themselves for the penalties, which were set to kick in on January 1. In fact, a lot of prominent chains like Papa John's, Olive Garden, Five Guys, and Subway had already warned customers that they would have to raise prices to comply. Others, like Regal Cinemas, are paring back workers' hours — or worse, letting them go altogether. The news that the President would be postponing the pain, in a statement shoved out the door two days from a long weekend, stunned everyone.
As Byron York points out in a new column for the Washington Examiner, President Obama had just finished explaining how swimmingly ObamaCare's implementation was going. Now we know that at that same time, “White House officials were secretly meeting with representatives of big business to discuss ways to [delay] enforcement of parts of the new law.” And what a surprise! The administration is suspending the fines until after the 2014 elections when the backlash would be most keenly felt. “It's better to do this right than fast,” insisted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) — which, ironically, is the approach most voters wish Congress had taken in passing the policy.
Now, the White House is finally getting around to reading the law it helped write, and every move to prolong its effects is another confirmation that ObamaCare is a ticking time bomb. And apparently, this President will do whatever it takes to get out of office before it explodes. For now, that means the man who has excelled at ignoring laws will agree to ignore his own! “This selective enforcement of laws has become an administration habit. From immigration to easing welfare reform's work requirement… the Obama administration routinely suspends enforcement of or unilaterally rewrites via regulation the laws it dislikes. Now,” the Wall Street Journal fumes, “it is doing it again on health care, without any consultation from, much less the approval of, Congress.”
Meanwhile, not every CEO was celebrating their independence from the employer mandate over the July 4th holiday. As House Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) points out, “a one-year delay does nothing to fix the law's fundamental flaws.” His committee, House Energy and Commerce, is tired of being bypassed by a lawless White House and is launching an investigation into what's really driving the decision-making process. In two separate letters, members ask the administration to produce documents on the White House's directive to postpone the mandate. Upton's colleague, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.), is also outraged. His Oversight and Government Reform Committee is questioning whether the President even “has the authority to do this without Congress.” On Wednesday, theHouse Ways and Means Health Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the mandate's suspension and whether the agencies had the power to shelve the rule without Congress's sign-off.
In the meantime, conservatives everywhere are convinced that the only way to protect Americafrom ObamaCare is to delay it permanently. Join House leaders in a new call to repeal and replace the Left's “train wreck!”
Reprinted with permission from FRC