Once again the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to selectively enforce its socialized medicine law due to political pressure brought about by broken political promises.
This time the administration is tinkering with the law’s controversial individual mandate tax – which violated a previous Obama promise not to raise taxes on Americans earning $250,000 or less. According to Obama’s embattled Health and Human Services (HHS) director Kathleen Sebelius, a “hardship exemption” will be granted to Americans whose health care coverage was canceled as a result of new Obamacare mandates.
Americans who “might be having difficulty” paying for standard coverage will also be granted an exemption.
The decision – Team Obama’s latest departure from the parameters of the law passed by Congress – is purely political. It is designed to delay the adverse consequences of Obamacare (i.e. canceled policies, higher taxes) until after the 2014 congressional elections.
But does Obama have the legal authority to make this change – or any of the arbitrary modifications his administration has made to Obamacare over the course of the last three-and-a-half years?
Of course not …
For those of you not up to snuff on your elementary school social studies, the federal government works like this: Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces them and the judicial branch interprets them.
Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work …
Obama, however, seems to think he is entitled to rewrite legislation on his own – without approval from Congress (all so his party can win a mid-term election). That’s flagrantly unconstitutional, and Obama needs to be called out for it. Obama and his allies made their beds when they passed Obamacare … but now they’re trampling all over the Constitution in an effort not to sleep in those beds.
Whether you like Obama (or Obamacare) is irrelevant to this discussion: This discussion is about the rule of law – and whether it still exists in America. Seriously … what’s the point in passing laws if they can be arbitrarily rewritten at an individual’s whim?
21 comments
Buck Farack
Yeah well so fracking what. It’s just the Constitution of These United (FUCKING) States of America. So What? Meh
I want to take you back, to a time that is remote and dimly remembered. A time when the righteous, self-appointed defenders of liberty were ever vigilant against the threat of executive overreach. Where no presidential assertion of power was let pass without gallons of ink being spilled over this or that perceived abuse of power. I know the 2000’s are so remote in time that it is unfair to expect that anyone, at least on the left, would remember those days. But perhaps one brave and intrepid soul will be able to shake free of the fog of time and rediscover the idea that the President, no matter how tingly he makes your legs feel, is subject to the requirements of the Constitution, and not the other way around.
“For those of you not up to snuff on your elementary school social studies, the federal government works like this: Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces them and the judicial branch interprets them.”
Except that Congress passed the Obamacare law and gave the executive branch though regulatory agencies the ability to essentially make up the rules as they go. Nobody’s rewriting any laws. Obama is doing exactly as the law says. It was just a crappy law.
2,000 pages of law, 18,000 pages of regulations, it was so crappy the Dems didn’t even read it before they passed it and Obama didn’t read it before he signed it. Calling it crappy is being kind.
Excellent point.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Government fucks up everything it touches. Less Government = Better.
yes! as a private citizen, i have never ever fucked anything up ever. and my business has never missed a target or failed a mission. if only healthcare were left in the immaculate hands of private companies and concerned citizens, nobody would ever die and medical insurance would cost less every year.
Generally when you screw up I don’t pay – we gubamint screws up we all pay.
The Obamacare website cost $600,000,000 to build and they’ve already spent an additional $160,000,000 trying to fix it.
Medicare contractors owe the government more than $7,000,000,000,000 in fines and overpayments and no one has even tried to collect the money.
Medicaid is so rife with corruption, overbilling and fraud that no one will even put a price on it except to say that it’s in the multiple tens of billions.
My insurance company can account for every dime – they’re required to by law.
Knucklehead, please! Way to go off on an absolutely incorrect tangent not at all analogous to what JJ said. Of course businesses screw up. The market takes care of that for us by eliminating them Darwin style, and we don’t get stuck with the bill. Business owners take the risk and they either reap the benefits or pay the piper. As a citizen (read, consumer) I get to choose whether or not I play. With big nanny government, not so much. We can rail on our medical system and insurance companies all you like (and there are parts that need tweaking without a doubt), but I’ll take my health care here, warts and all, what my friends in Canada and the UK are suffering through.
yeah! laws should never be changed. regulations should never be adjusted even when flaws are found. laws should only be repealed and replaced with nothing. LIMITED nothingness.
the Executive Branch can ask Congress to change the law, but has ABSOLUTELY NO AUTHORITY to arbitrarily decide to change a law or decide which laws to enforce.
Yep…all so predictable. The Obamacare chickens have come home to roost. A terrible law, rammed through on a strictly partisan vote in the middle of the night, without any of these idiots who voted for it having actually READ it, complete with arm-twisting, bribes, payoffs and kickbacks to secure votes for it, with all ideas from the other side (tort reform, interstate competion) being rejected out of hand, with the vast majority of the country opposed to it, sold on purposeful lies and willful distortion (“if you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period”), now leaving millions uninsured (or paying much higher premiums for plans they don’t want or need) and millions more to come once the employer mandate kicks in (after the next election, of course)…a disaster/debacle/disgrace in every sense of the word. You idiots who wanted your “free” healthcare…you’ve got it. Idiots.
“Obamacare: Still Changing On The Fly”
I think you meant pulling changes out of his fly or maybe his seat…
Thank goodness Republicans are offering legislation to fix the problems they squawk about rather than demanding repeal, defunding, delaying, obstructing, shutting everything down, or demanding huge and unreasonable wish lists, right?
Oh, wait. We had to change Senate rules just to stop complete, 100% obstruction of appointing judges, not on the basis of whether those individual nominees were bad, but because the GOP wants to stamp its feet and keep Congress, and by extension, the President, from functioning in the slightest bit. Hell, they changed the rules in the House to ensure the shutdown lasted as long as they wanted it to.
Bitch all you want, at least Obama is trying to govern.
What do you do when Obama’s bill IS the problem? The entire structure is a purely thought out, outrageously partisan, economically flawed approach that does not even fix the problem it purports to address. Repeal is the best fix for this mess.
It is the prideful, win at all costs mentality of the Democrats that prevents them from admitting their own error and doing what is in the best interest of the country rather than what Obama perceives as being in the best interest of his legacy.
And good one on Obama trying to govern. The man considers PR campaigns and speeches to be the same thing as leadership. But what do you expect from someone who has never had to run anything but a campaign?
The laughs keep coming…..I wouldn’t call what Obama is doing …” trying to govern”.
Obama couldn’t govern his way out of a brown paper bag.
“Trying to govern” my ass. Is that when he’s not on the golf course? You’ve posted a ton of ridiculous shit here over the years but that might be the most ridiculous. He has NO EARTHLY CLUE as to how to govern. Never did from the start. For crying out loud, you’ve got inside the beltway liberal journalist icons – Bob Woodward – who have said the same thing. All he’s done for 5 long years is blame everyone else for his complete lack of leadership, his administration’s myriad of fuck ups/broken promises and campaign to adoring crowds. Oh, and yeah – play golf. He’s a joke….a fairy tale (according to ole Billy Clinton himself)…an individual in so far over his head it’s been pathetic to watch. “Trying to govern.” BWAAHAAAAHAA
The rule of law is sooooo not coool! Barack is cool….just makin up laws each and every day picking and choosing which ones he will or won’t enforce…but, hey, Pajama Boy seyz it’ s okay and so does Katy Perry…and as long as Sandra Fluke gets her little pink pills it’s all cool…liberty and freedom require too much responsibility…hope and change are easier to spell and remember…as long as the ebt card works we play…dig?
Obama sets an excellent example that BREAKING THE LAW is ok. Only Congress can amend the statutes of law. See how this fucked up sack of shit just spits in the people’s face? See how Congress doesn’t really even care? Me thinks we could see a violent revolution in the days ahead where members of Congress will have to go into hiding. Tens of millions of Americans are just down right pissed off at them all. Obama should have already been impeached. And our own member of Congress calling for a federal civil suit against Obama over abuse of power??? HAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!!!! LAWD, what a JOKE!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAAHAAAA!!!!