This week President Obama announced the Affordable Care Act mandate for medium sized businesses will be delayed again. This time until 2015. This makes the 28th change by the White House to the Affordable Care Act without consent of Congress. This is serious. When a law says something will take effect on a date certain, the President has no authority to delay it a year. The President is willfully failing to follow the Constitution.
Now, I am totally opposed to the Affordable Care Act. I want it repealed in its entirety and replaced with a patient-centered, market-driven system of health care. I would support Congress delaying implementation. That would send a signal that Obamacare has flaws and when that new date arrived, Congress could delay it again and again and with each congressional delay, repeal would be less a dramatic and traumatic vote. When the White House delays it however, that does not force Congress to admit an error and it does not sent the same message. An administrative delay seems less of an admission of failure. The delay delays the pain of the act so that the failure of the ACA is less a campaign issue. If the medium sized business mandate kicked in prior to the 2014 elections, more people wold lose their insurance or see their insurance premiums rise and realize Obamacare is a failure and this would help Republicans. The President should not be allowed to time the effective date of a legislative act to influence elections.
Obama's twenty-eight changes to Obamacare is a major power crab. If this is allowed to stand, Democrats may come to regret it. If Obama can make 28 changes to the ACA without consent of Congress then when a Republican is someday elected to the presidency, he may make 28 changes or more or simply suspend the law without congressional consent. What if a Republican wanted to arbitrarily abolish the corporate income tax? I think that would be good policy but where would the President get authority to do that? The same place Obama got the authority to make 28 changes to the Affordable Care Act. Those who only care about the policy outcome and not the process are destroying what has made America unique as a stable democracy governed by the rule of law. Once we abandon the rule of law, a President may just decide to delay the next election until a date more favorable to his party or he may just suspend Congress.
Congress will not impeach and remove from office America's first Black president. They just won't. I do not know how far Obama would have to go before his supporters turned on him. However, knowing that the Senate will not convict should not keep the House from beginning the process. Obama is in violation of his constitutional oath "faithfully to execute the
office of President of the United States and, to the best of his
ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United
States," and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. He has willfully corrupted and manipulated
the legislative process of the United States. It is time to impeach.
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