If President Obama can unilaterally decide to postpone parts of Obamacare, so can a Republican president. So Republican presidential hopefuls should begin identifying which parts of Obamacare they will unilaterally postpone if elected president.
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Even the Washington Post editorial board acknowledges the possibility, “Imagine how Democrats would respond if a President Rand Paul, say, moved into the White House in 2017 and announced he was going to put off provisions of Obamacare he thought might be too onerous to administer.”
Yes, just imagine!
Obama has postponed the employer mandate twice: once for all employers and this week for mid-sized employers, to 2016. If Obama can postpone the employer mandate for two years to “smooth the transition,” postponing it for another four years shouldn’t be a problem.
More importantly, a Republican president should postpone the individual mandate for five or even 10 years. Individuals struggling to pay for the higher Obamacare premiums certainly need more “transition smoothing” than businesses.
In addition, a Republican in the White House might also want to postpone the taxpayer-funded subsides, or at least the upper end of the subsidies, say above 300 percent of the federal poverty level. And the president should postpone any IRS implementation of penalties that would be imposed for not complying with the law.
The boldest proposal would be to postpone the entire law.
Can a Republican president just decide to postpone Obamacare? Who knows! The most lawless president in history has opened up a whole new chapter, and no one knows where this can and will go.
Some Democrats will scream that the Republican president is acting lawlessly, not enforcing the “law of the land.” But the criticism will ring hollow coming from the same hypocrites who remain absolutely silent when their president doesn’t enforce the law—a law that bears his name.
In December the Congressional Research Service released a paper identifying six administrative delays in implementation so far. Obama’s most recent delay brings the number to at least seven, and we will likely see several more before the November election—for political reasons that have nothing to do with implementation.
And thanks to Obama, we know an incoming Republican president wouldn’t need congressional legislation to postpone parts of the law. So Republican presidential hopefuls don’t have to hedge their campaign pledges. They should tell us what parts of Obamacare they will postpone and then campaign on it. Considering how unpopular the law is, a postponement pledge could get a landslide vote.
As White House National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling recently said, “So when you do things that are big and hard, they require more adjustments and transitions, considerations to make sure that they are being implemented in as manageable a situation as possible.” Exactly, and it make 10 or even 20 years to get it right.
There was a time when the U.S. was a nation of laws. Today, we’re a nation of unilateral presidential decisions. Democrats will rue the day they sat silent as their “constitutional scholar” in the White House trampled the separation of powers. The American people already do.