Bloomberg News reported this evening that the Obama Administration is set to announce a one-year delay in enforcement of Obamacare’s employer mandate, a move the Treasury Department recently confirmed in a blog post.
However, the problem is not just Obamacare’s employer mandate—the real problem is Obamacare itself. The same individuals who said Obamacare would create jobs, not destroy them, are now the same ones who will say the Administration can “fix” the employer mandate, if only given another year to do so. Conservatives should not be fooled, appeased, or assuaged. Instead, today’s developments should provide every incentive for the American people to redouble their efforts to repeal, defund, and dismantle ALL of this bureaucratic, unworkable law.
The idea that selectively enforcing one provision of the law could “solve” all the problems inherent in Obamacare is absurd on its face. In fact, the Administration’s position raises more questions than it answers:
- If the employer mandate will prove so devastating to businesses that it can’t be enforced in 2014—following three years of implementation work—why should it be enforced at all?
- Will delaying implementation of the employer mandate encourage more firms to drop coverage entirely and dump their workers on to Exchanges, raising the cost of taxpayer-funded subsidies by trillions?
- What about individuals who can’t afford to buy health insurance, yet will be forced to do so under Obamacare? Will they get an exemption from enforcement as well?
It is hard to understate the impact of today’s devastating admission from the Administration that, after three years, it still cannot implement Obamacare without strangling businesses in red tape and destroying American jobs. That said, it is still not too late for Congress to do the right thing, and refuse to fund what the Administration has now—finally—admitted is a job-killing train wreck.
