Rollcall:
President Barack Obama’s latest legal end run around Congress — delaying enforcement of the employer health mandate — has sparked more questions about whether he’s abusing his executive discretion under the Constitution.
The move announced late Tuesday was the latest in a string of decisions where the president, facing a divided Congress unable to get much done beyond keeping the government running, has taken matters into his own hands.
Where a previous president might have asked for a legislative fix if a mandate was proving too onerous for business, the Obama administration put out a couple of blog posts saying that, in listening to the business community, it decided not to enforce a key part of the 3-year-old health law for another year.
The administration notes that parts of laws are delayed in implementation all the time — including various pieces of the tax code.
A Treasury official said the administration has “longstanding administrative authority to grant transition relief when implementing new legislation like the ACA.”
But three House committees are already looking into the decision, with Republicans complaining about a disturbing trend where the president decides which laws to enforce and which to ignore.
Darrell Issa of California, the chairman of Oversight and Government Reform, 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.”
Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Kevin Brady of Texas announced a hearing July 10 focusing on the administration’s authority to delay enforcement.
And Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee, the 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 CQ Roll Call. “Both Republicans and Democrats should be very concerned, and I will continue to closely monitor these actions and hold the president accountable.”
Aside from the unconstitutionality of Obama arbitrarily re-writing a law that Congress and passed and he signed, in direct violation of the separation of powers clause, Obama plans to unilaterally use discretionary enforcement in a supposed loophole decision, so as not to enforce the law until after the 2014 elections.
There remains a serious legal problem here for businesses. The mandated enactment date in the legislation has not been changed, regardless of what “the Won” declares, and these businesses are still required to abide by the law. Obama may waive enforcement of the law against them, but enforcement officers who take their job seriously, or later presidential administrations can retroactively enforce the law, and hold each and every one of these businesses responsible for their failure to abide by the law when it went into effect.
Obama’s pseudo-legal trickery gives these businesses absolutely no legal excuse or protection allowing them to disobey Federal law.
Imagine the frothing at the mouth from leftists if say a republican president came on board and arbitrarily decided to “delay” implementing Obamacare – regardless of the reason – in violation of the already signed-into-law date for starting this ignoble program.
This is even more ironclad evidence that providing affordable healthcare is absolutely NOT the purpose of this evil law. Putting all of us into slavery to the leftist overlords in perpituity is the cause, and if a one year delay in implementation increases the chance of permanently forcing the masses into healthcare enslavement, then Obama and the rest of this marxist cabal is perfectly happy to perform this strategic rearward advancement. What is utterly contemptible is how blithely they lie about their reason for the delay, trying to make it seem like they give a rat’s backside about what business owners think, rather than recognizing the electoral danger democrats will face if the economy gets any worse than it already is because of obamacare.
This blatant disregard for one’s fellow man by leftists lusting to impose their will over others is not American. But is it absolutely evil.