The Fool Who Would Be King Pt. 2

Before the Affordable Care  was enacted it took a trip up to SCOTUS where Justice Roberts cast the deciding vote in making it officially law. Most conservatives went insane when the ruling came down but I believe that the gang in black got it right. Leading up to the decision the right kept screaming that the individual mandate was a tax and the Obama team screamed just as loudly that it wasn't but ironically the administration's attorneys argued that exact point in a hail Mary effort and the court agreed.  It all boiled down to the fact that Congress has the power to levy taxes and make law. The President's only role in this process is either to sign the bill into law or veto it. That's it.  Now it appears that once again Obama is confused and is under the impression that he is a king and not a president. He thinks that with a wave of his scepter he can unilaterally  delay it.

This is Obama's latest attempt to do an end run around Congress and the constitution. It's become a regular occurrence for him to abuse executive discretion under the aforementioned constitution.  Some of the more 'cynical' correctly believe that Obama is trying to delay the enforcement of the employer health mandate until after the 2014 mid-term elections. This law and mandate is so odorous and the burdens that it will place on companies and individuals will hurt democrats in the mid-term elections. The latest Rasmussen poll shows a 55% unfavorable rating on Obamacare.   It appears that the administration has figured out that what we knew fairly early on and that is that the reporting system is too "burdensome" and it's bad law.

Where as a previous president would have gone to Congress for a legislative fix if a mandate was proving too onerous for busness the Obama  administration just put out a couple of blog posts saying and I paraphrase, that they have heard the voices of the business community and (arbitrarily) decided (on it's own) not to enforce a key part of the 3 year old healthcare law for another year.  *emphasis added

It didn't take Congressman Darrell Issa the republican from California and the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform committee to chime in and he called the decision; "another in a string of extra legal actions" taken by Obama.

“As a former constitutional law teacher, President Obama must know that this action gets into very questionable constitutional territory,” Issa said in a statement to CQ Roll Call. “It also paves the way for future administrations to simply not enforce parts of ObamaCare they don’t believe are functioning well.”

Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, chairman of an Education and the Workforce subcommittee, asked the Congressional Research Service to investigate.

“I believe this administration has made a habit of bypassing Congress and it sets a very dangerous precedent,” 

Roe said in a statement to Roll Call. “Both Republicans and Democrats should be very concerned, and I will continue to closely monitor these actions and hold the president accountable.”

And then one of my favorite people, former Florida Congressman Col Allen West commented and was a lot more direct in his assessment of the maneuver on his Facebook page:

“President Obama has made a decision to postpone the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) until 1 Jan 2015 – which just happens to be after the 2014 mid-term elections. The Who had a song with the refrain, “We won’t get fooled again.” I implore America to not be sucker-punched by Obama and the progressive socialist charlatans of the Democrat party.

The Affordable Care Act is nothing more than a massive tax law that was rammed down the throats of the American people in 2010. Democrats fear having to defend it next year and they’re hoping to regain control of the House in 2014 so they can finish the job of fundamentally transforming America in Obama’s final two years; in other words, destroying our country. Don’t get fooled again!”

I think that Louisianna's Governer Bobby Jindal had the best burn of all though:

"You know things are bad when you can’t even successfully implement your own bad ideas."

In the Democrats rush to ram  Obamacare down our throats  they mad a fatal mistake, they didn't read it. It's a horrible, burdensome and expensive law that will still leave tens of millions of people uninsured. Now in an effort to save their own skins they're trying some slight of hand to 'un-ram' the law so that it won't hurt them further when the next election rolls around. I only wish that they cared as much for the welfare of this country as they do protecting their own jobs and party.