Drawing Blood: Can Obamacare Be Killed?

Townhall.com ^ | July 5, 2013 | Donald Lambro

[Kaslin]

WASHINGTON - The White House decision to delay the implementation of Obamacare's business mandate for one year sent shock waves through political circles here.

The Obama administration tried to cloak its decision in soothing rhetoric about giving small businesses more time to provide health insurance benefits for employees who work more than 30 hours a week that was set to begin next January.

"We believe we need to give employers more time to comply with the new rules," Obama's senior White House political fixer Valerie Jarrett wrote in her blog on Tuesday night. "This allows employers time to ...make any necessary adaptations to their health benefits while staying the course toward making health coverage more affordable and accessible for their workers."

Baloney. The West Wing's sudden decision has midterm congressional election politics and a weak, job-starved, economy written all over it. Obama's top political advisers are getting hit by rising complaints from Democrats who fear that the mandate is a ticking time bomb that will hurt the party's chances in the 2014 elections, especially in close Senate races where Obamacare is very unpopular.

That's when the Obamacare law was scheduled to force businesses with a workforce of 50 or more people to provide health insurance for their employees or else get slapped with a $2,000 fine for each worker.

Businesses who operate on the margin, and have been struggling to survive in the weak Obama economy, have been objecting to the mandate provision, warning that it will mean laying off workers or using more part-timers who work fewer hours to evade the mandate's 30 hour thresh-hold.

"Employers are going to continue to restructure their businesses to avoid pulling the 50-employer trigger. And it isn't reporting requirements that are the primary concern of employers -- it's the cost of the Obamacare health insurance and fines," says veteran health care analyst Grace-Marie Turner.

While the White House sought to portray the one year delay as a careful policy decision to give small businesses more time to understand the new law's complex rules and regulations, political observers weren't fooled.

By delaying the mandate until January, 2015, "the Obama administration heads off the unseemly spectacle of companies vowing to cut jobs or workers' hours to avoid the costly mandate," writes Sarah Kliff in Wednesday's Washington Post.

Republicans are planning to make Obamacare and its job-killing mandates a major issue in the midterm House and Senate races, warning that it will lead to higher health insurance premiums and that "the train wreck will only get worse," said House Speaker John Boehner. "This is a clear acknowledgment that the law is unworkable."

That fear has led to a case of the political jitters among Democrats in Congress who've privately expressed their concerns to the White House. It hasn't gotten much media attention, but lawmakers in both parties have just begun to draft bipartisan legislation that would raise the mandate's threshold for employees who work more than 40 hours a week, among other changes.

The decision to postpone the mandate was made by President Obama on Air Force One as he was returning from Africa on Tuesday. But the last-minute pullback didn't sit well with some of his advisers.

Bob Kocher, a former health care adviser to Obama, expressed disappointment, saying it will result in a growing uncertainty about when other sections of the law will take effect. "It confuses people [and] will undermine all the other rules because people will expect delay," he said.

Other Obamacare supporters worry that any delays will give opponents of the law more confidence that they can kill it outright.

"Politically, it won't get easier a year from now, it will get harder," says John McDonough, a Harvard professor who was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's health policy adviser.

"You've given the employer community a sense of confidence that maybe they can kill this. If I were an employer, I would smell blood in the water," he said.

That's exactly what is happening on Capitol Hill among Republicans who have been emboldened by Obama's last minute decision to delay the mandate's implementation.

"Instead of simply delaying implementation of Obamacare, we should repeal it in its entirety," said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, the well-funded election strike force that bankrolls pro-economic growth candidates.

"Obamacare is a horrible piece of legislation that will harm economic growth and it must be stopped," Chocola said.

The message that the White House has been getting since the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 is that business will pare down their work force to reduce their exposure to higher healthcare costs. It is now beginning to sink in, as more Democrats are beginning to hear this from their business constituents back home.

That's the message Neil Trautwein, vice president of the National Retail Federation, has been pushing in his meetings with administration officials: "If you set a hard, 30-hour limit for eligibility, you encourage employers to cut where they can." And that means cutting jobs.

Let's not mince words. The White House's decision to delay the mandate was driven by the nation's weak jobs numbers and its looming political impact next year.

In his mid-year review of the economy Tuesday, the Post's Neil Irwin concluded, "no progress has been made in putting more Americans to work in 2013."

While the national unemployment rate remains around 7.6, the bleak reality is that 18 states -- including the most populated ones -- have much higher jobless rates and 15 of them are between 8 percent and 9.5 percent.

As long as these numbers persist, Obama's employer mandate is dead in the water.

[Arm_Bears]

So—Laws don’t matter.

I’d say that’s a step in the right direction.

[whitedog57]

It better be killed before it kills us.

http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2013/07/05/the-big-lebowski-recovery-jobs-up-195k-but-full-time-jobs-down-240k-part-time-up-360k/

[DannyTN]

Democrats passed it to find out what was in it.

Now they know. They made their bed, let them lie in it.

[Bernard Marx]

Lambro totally misses the most important point. This action by Obama is illegal and unconstitutional because it bypasses Congress. It’s politically motivated and if left unchallenged establishes him as a dictator, able to ignore Congress on about anything. Of course the Republicans probably don’t have the stones to enforce enactment of the law as written and signed by the President because they fear they’ll be attacked as job-killers by the media.

[upchuck]

So Val Jar decides she can modify established law (nobamacare) when ever she wants?

Where are the Republicans on this? I know, I know.

[Dahoser]

That fear has led to a case of the political jitters among Democrats in Congress who've privately expressed their concerns to the White House. It hasn't gotten much media attention, but lawmakers in both parties have just begun to draft bipartisan legislation that would raise the mandate's threshold for employees who work more than 40 hours a week, among other changes.

Why, he asks rhetorically, would any Republican try to fix this thing and thereby give cover to Obama and the RATS? Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton tell us all the time that it sucks to be in the minority, but the GOP-e can't work hard enough to return to their Bob Michel minority status.

[Jacquerie]

One of the lesser known reasons cited for the Constitutional Convention was the mutability of state laws and how they affected fellow members and citizens of the federation.

Under Obama, we have, in a large way come full circle. Laws increasingly mean what he says, and not what Congress passed. The average person, and especially businesses can have little confidence that some arbitrary political decision will not be made that seriously impacts their bottom line.

All of which is, as you say, unconstitutional.

[Mr. K]

The GOP should not let him get away with that

He can’t just decide when and where to implement THAT LAW

And he was hell bent on cramming it down our throats

The law says 2013 then they should FORCE IT to happen

[Sooth2222]

"Can Obamacare Be Killed?"

I think its on the ledge, threatening to jump. (Let it.)

[txrefugee]

Of course it can be killed. No one can be forced to sign up at the exchanges. Obama and Sebelius can hire a million IRS agents and “Navigators” to deciper 2200 page law, but if the public does not stand in line like sheeple to sign up, it will go bust. Doing nothing in this case is exactly the right thing to do.

[Vigilanteman]

How many Freepers are old enough to remember this news photo of April 29, 1975?

Saigon fell the following day. This was one of the last helicopters out. It didn't have to happen that way.

Vietnam had achieved a negotiated armistice much like Korea two years earlier.

However, due to "Deep Throat" Mark Felt's anger about being passed over for an FBI promotion which he thought he deserved, strategic leaks were made to the media to turn Watergate and the Nixon resignation into the major issue of the 1974 mid-terms. The GOP suffered a severe shellecking after a 49 state landslide just two years earlier.

I was not a fan of President Ford. He was the Mitt Romney of his era. But he understood the U.S. had treaty obligations to at least send our ships to the narrow DMZ to at least slow an invasion of the North Vietnam army in March 1975. Ford asked for a temporary authorization of funds and congress responded by cutting off everything needed for a small scale military operation to at least slow the invasion and, if not give South Vietnam at least a fighting chance to defend themselves, then to at least ensure an orderly evacuation.

Congress instead left our ally, people who had risked their lives to save Americans and even our own American personnel twisting in the wind while the Ford administration organized the only too little, too late evacuation which they were able to muster without congressional approval.

Tell me why our present congress can't do the same by defunding the implementation of ObamaCare.

[SDShack]

What is really scary is that the GOP has a perfect issue to exploit in 2014 and 2016 for all the best reasons... repeal it and replace it with a system that actually lowers costs and provides better coverage. Instead, this article says there is a “bipartisan” (ie. RINO) effort to raise the mandate requirements to 40 hours. So instead of hanging the dumbcrats with their own monstrosity, the GOP will help them “fix” it and end up screwing the country again. If the GOP does this, and gives illegals amnesty, then they really are nothing but dumbcrats and it’s time for a 3rd party.

[Kaslin]

The only way the GOP can be successful with repealing Obamacare is to make sure that we take the Senate back by a big majority and increase our seats in the House.

[SDShack]

I don’t expect 0zer0care to be repealed as long as 0zer0 is in office... even if the GOP takes the both houses in 2014. My earlier post was to merely point out that the GOP should frame the 2014 campaign on repealing and replacing 0zer0care. Instead, it looks like they might actually try to help the dumbcrats change the 30 hour employee mandate to 40 hours. That is bad policy AND bad politics. The GOP can’t even get the politics right, let alone the policy.

[Excellence]

Full time employees who thought they would be covered next year won’t be and yet are still obligated to get coverage on their own. I’m willing to bet there are more of these employees than there are businesses.

[Wurlitzer]

Valerie has her puppet master hand so far up obozo’s butt she should receive SS protection. She needs it!

[TBP]

Defund the IRS and they won’t have the resources to enforce the mandate.

[arthurus]

Obamacare must fail if insufficient peole sign up for the Exchanges.