Treasury: Employers must “self-attest” OCare not behind staffing decisions

Old and busted: Businesses will love ObamaCare for its cost savings in health care! New hotness: Businesses had better not make staffing decisions based on cost savings from ObamaCare-fueled price spikes! After its latest delay in implementing the employer mandate, the Obama administration rebuffed criticisms that the law incentivizes employers to shift to part-time work by announcing the Treasury Inquisition — ahem, excuse me, the Treasury Attestation Department:

The latest announcement comes after the administration heard from businesses about their concerns with the looming ObamaCare rules. However, the change is sure to raise more questions about the health and implementation of the law. Fewer workers getting insurance through their employers could mean more individuals on the ObamaCare exchanges seeking subsidized coverage, increasing the cost to taxpayers.

Some lawmakers, though, have claimed that the mere threat of the employer mandate is causing companies to shed full-time workers in the hope of keeping their staff size below 50 and avoiding the requirement.

Administration officials dispute that this is happening on any large scale. Further, Treasury officials said Monday that businesses will be told to “certify” that they are not shedding full-time workers simply to avoid the mandate. Officials said employers will be told to sign a “self-attestation” on their tax forms affirming this, under penalty of perjury.

Officials stressed that the latest reprieve applies to a relatively small percentage of employers — albeit companies that employ millions of workers.

Er … exactly what gives Treasury the authority to demand that kind of pledge, anyway? The law only mandates that employers provide coverage for full-time employees, a status defined by working 30 or more hours a week. It doesn’t contain any authority for Treasury or anyone else to force current full-time employees to stay in that status, nor for the federal government to dictate ratios of full-time/part-time staff.

On what statutory authority Treasury is relying
for the certification requirement? http://goo.gl/0DC6oY

The Obama administration is big on self-attestation, huh? Just ask the Little Sisters of the Poor. They’ve certainly gotten the “bully” part of the bully pulpit in mind these days at the White House.

This seems an opportune time to revisit F. A. Hayek and The Road to Serfdom about the nature of command economies, and the nature of governments that impose them. Hayek supported social insurance programs, but warned that crafting them or anything else in the nature of a command economy would not just guarantee economic failure, but increasing lawlessness, arbitrariness, and tyranny from the government that imposes it as it gets desperate to avoid failure. That cycle appears to be fast-tracked with ObamaCare at Treasury.

My friend Scott Johnson at Power Line recalls the argument well in a rebuttal of a recent column from E. J. Dionne:

"As I say, I guess it’s too difficult to actually read Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, or his more complete Constitution of Liberty, to see what his argument actually was, so easier just to go with Judt’s comic book version instead. In both of his great books, Hayek endorses the principle of social insurance (and even a mandate for everyone to buy health insurance—egad*), but is concerned with the tendency toward making social insurance programs into redistribution programs. Wow—crazy stuff, I know. But you can see that Judt’s formula that Hayek opposed “welfare policies of any sort” is flat wrong.

And is Hayek’s broader point that centralized economic planning would lead to tyrannical government really so far-fetched? The linchpin of Hayek’s argument was that the plans and desires of the statists would require the undermining of the rule of law, because steadily increasing arbitrary power is necessary for their centralized schemes to work. I wonder whether Dionne has checked in lately with the Little Sisters of the Poor? Or has taken notice of the IRS harassment of groups opposed to Obama? I wonder what he makes of Obama’s unilateral executive decisions simply to suspend parts of the health care law that are politically inconvenient?"

As for me, I wonder whether Scott expected his argument to be so very well validated in such a short space of time. Of course, no one expects the Treasury Inquisition …

Next you will need to have a valid reason for closing your business.

Next there will be no valid reson for cloing your business:

Directive 10-289
In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people's security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:
Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification Board, such Board to be appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the interests of the nation.
Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.
Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.
Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive. The Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.
Point Five. Every establishment, concern, corporation or person engaged in production of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth produce the same amount of goods per year as it, they or he produced during the Basic Year, no more and no less. The year to be known as the Basic or Yardstick Year is to be the year ending on the date of this directive. Over or under production shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.
Point Six. Every person of any age, sex, class or income, shall henceforth spend the same amount of money on the purchase of goods per year as he or she spent during the Basic Year, no more and no less. Over or under purchasing shall be fined, such fines to be determined by the Unification Board.
Point Seven. All wages, prices, salaries, dividends, profits, interest rates and forms of income of any nature whatsoever, shall be frozen at their present figures, as of the date of this directive.
Point Eight. All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions will be final.

question authority

That's not too far from an idea I had a few years ago.

No branch of government can take it upon itself to violate any written law, nor create laws "on the fly".

The checks and balances system which our founding fathers created, is not working, or is not being enforced.

Thus, somewhere along the way, a new "question authority" system needs to be created, which will be tasked with looking at violations of the constitution and any federal laws.

That "question authority" agency should be part of the Supreme Court, where the members are tasked with looking at apparent and real violations of the laws of the land, and then presenting the violation(s) in a brief on behalf of the American people, to the 9 supreme judges. The judges don't need to create a long case which will take years to make a judgement on. Just an initial warning about the violations should be enough to put the violators on notice that a law is being broken, and if corrective action isn't taken, then the case can be brought up against the violators. The whole process shouldn't take more than a few weeks to get corrective measures implemented.

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