Monday, February 10, 2014

Law? What Law? Another Illegal Change To ObamaCare

President Obama pulled another lawless stunt today, this time again with ObamaCare. Last year,the president postponed the individual mandate. This year, in spite of the happy talk coming from his loyal acolytes, the abject failure and the unpopularity of ObamaCare is becoming more and more evident, to the point where it was actually threatening to hurt Democrat prospects in the midterms.

So the president simply punted again.

According to the law passed by Congress and signed by the president, businesses with 50 or more full-time employees are required to provide them with health insurance as of January 1, 2014. Today however, the Treasury Department announced that employers with fewer than 100 workers won’t have to provide health insurance for them until 2016.

In fact, the president has made 13 major changes to ObamaCare in the past year, all of them blatantly illegal. And if that wasn't bad enough, the changes were made not just to correct glitches in what may be the worst written law in our history, but for partisan political purposes.

Remember when those of us warning about ObamaCare and what it was likely to do were told smugly to shut up because 'it's settled law'?

Apparently it is until this president decides it isn't, something that contradicts directly his constitutional responsibility as head of the executive branch. And he continues to get away with it, event though the partisan media admits it's strictly for his own political expediency, to “limit election-year damage” as the AP put it.

There's an interesting sidelight here. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner abruptly retreated yesterday from the positive noises he was making up until now about a House amnesty bill, claiming that he didn't trust the president to carry out the enforcement parts of any law on immigration. Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer promptly took up the game just this morning, suggesting that congress pass an amnesty law now that would only tale effect once President Obama was out of office.

By coming out today with yet another illegal ObamaCare delay, President Obama couldn't have underlined the very good reasons for that lack of trust any better if he had tried.

This may very well put a a halt to the Republican establishment's efforts to push through amnesty for now, and certainly no one in the GOP is likely to insist that the president follow the law on ObamaCare to the letter. But this is very much a two edged sword, and I don't think the timing was coincidental.

By coming out with this so soon after Boehner's remarks about not trusting the president to enforce border security,President Obama was sending a very obvious message.

He could care less about working with congress on this or most other issues. After the midterms, look for him to institute amnesty of some kind by executive order.

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