Washington Post comes for 'cavalier' Obama on law enforcement

Credit: AP

President Obama is "increasingly cavalier" in the way his administration enforces the new health care law, according to the Washington Post's editorial board.

The paper published an editorial Tuesday slamming Obama's decision this week to once again delay part of his healthcare law's employer mandate. The mandate, already postponed last summer, dictates that employers with 50 to 99 workers must provide those workers with health insurance, or else there is a penalty.

It was originally scheduled to take effect in 2014 before the initial delay. It has now been suspended until 2016, well after this year's midterm election.

From the editorial:

Yes, Republicans have done everything they can to impede implementation of this law. Yes, their “solution” — gutting the individual mandate — is an awful idea. And, yes, their public response to the administration’s action was predictably over-the-top. But none of that excuses President Obama’s increasingly cavalier approach to picking and choosing how to enforce this law. Imagine how Democrats would respond if a President Rand Paul, say, moved into the White House in 2017 and announced he was going to put off provisions of Obamacare he thought might be too onerous to administer. ...

[T]he administration is unilaterally making distinctions between large businesses and medium ones; the latter group, which will get hit hardest and scream loudest when the employer mandate kicks in, will be treated more leniently. The law is also explicit that the government should be enforcing penalties already; that’s the plainest interpretation of Congress’s intent. The administration shouldn’t dismiss that without exceptionally good reason. Fear of a midterm shellacking doesn’t qualify as good reason.