Some random thoughts on President Barack Obama’s latest…delay…of inconvenient parts of his health welfare law:

House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH):

[O]nce again, the president is rewriting law on a whim.  If the administration doesn’t believe employers can manage the burden of the law, how can struggling families be expected to?

This latest rewrite, now being carried out by the Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew in President Barack Obama’s name, is as lawless as Obama’s previous rewrites.  No authority to rewrite, or to refuse to enforce parts of, the Obamacare law or any other law exists in the Executive Branch.  Law writing and changing—both!—are the sole prerogative of the people’s elected representatives in the Congress.  What Obama is doing isn’t a rule adjustment in order to better effect the law, it’s a plain and simple refusal to enforce the law (under the guise of rewriting it), as the President and his Treasury Secretary are sworn to do.  And it was done solely for Democratic Party electoral gain; the move has nothing to do with what’s good for American businesses, and not at all with anything related to what’s good for American citizens.

Incidentally, the Treasurer’s oath of office is this (the President’s oath of office is in Art II, Section 1 of the Constitution):

I (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.  So help me God.

“Support and defend the Constitution of the United States” means, in this context, that the Treasurer is sworn to honor the separation of powers delineated in Articles I and II of the Constitution, which means in turn, he must do his part to enforce the law as it’s written; he cannot (as opposed to may not) rewrite it at convenience of for any other purpose.

I’m unsympathetic toward the insurers here.  Insurance company management wanted Obamacare, and they lobbied hard for it.  Now they’re reaping what they sowed, in terms of unbalanced costs.  The insurance companies’ management has been immoral and cowardly: they wanted to get into bed with government and take advantage of personal relationships with government bureaucrats and politicians so they could freeload off their fellow citizens and their tax money.  Instead, they should have chosen the path of being responsible fellow citizens themselves, taking advantage of their relationships with customers through free market.

As advertised, this…rewrite…is a temporary change, and the law will resume its full force in 2017 (conveniently after the next two elections, by the way).  As a temporary measure, it can have no effect on our economy, on business’ decisions as they operate in our economy, or on hiring (or not hiring).  This just extends the uncertainty, and it continues the drag on our economy and on Americans’ prosperity.  Any high school student of economics understands this, and so do Obama, Lew, and their Progressive fellows in Congress.

Again: this is a move purely for cynical Party gain, and nothing else at all.