Obama Administration Backslides On 50 Employee Worker Mandate

Our backslidings are many.

Isaiah

The  Obama administration had taken another unilateral step down the slippery slope known as ObamaCare.   It has delayed its mandate  for a year that penalizes small and medium sized businesses of 50 employees or over with a fine of $2000 for each uncovered worker.

The new ruling has three parts.

1.  Employers with 50 to  99 employees get a another year of transition.

2. Employers with 100 or  more workers aren't required to cover everyone.

3.  Volunteers won't be counted as full-time employees.

It is Obama’s  latest tweak to placate the business community who have regarded the 50 employee rule as the most virulent antigrowth provision of ObamaCare.  The business community maintains  the 50 employee rule has slowed hiring, increased overhead,  and  culminated in a part-time employment economy.  

This tweak, when coupled with last week’s CBO report that ObamaCare  may encourage  2.3 million Americans not to work over the next 10 years,  is another blow against the administration.

It  opens other floodgates  of criticism.

These  floodgates include:

·          The argument that President Obama, by taking unilateral executive actions,   violates the Constitution,  which says the President must consult with Congress before changing a law.

      The argument that if the Employment Mandate is changed the Individual Mandate must also  be changed, for it is unfair to continue to punish individuals and their families while letting businesses off the hook. 

 Republicans have seized upon this latest change.

Senators Tom Barrasso, R. Wyoming, and joined Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma., and other Republican lawmakers by  immediately firing  off  a letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen,  asking about the enforcement of the individual mandate, considering all the other changes to the law's implementation.

The letter read:

"Given a number of last-minute administrative 'adjustments' made by the Administration, there is some understandable confusion and concern about the enforcement of the individual mandate tax. With the Administration's decision to waive, delay, or unilaterally alter some provisions of the law-including the employer mandate tax on businesses-taxpayers deserve clarification on how the agency intends to enforce the individual mandate tax." 

 The language and words  used – waive, delay, unilaterally alter – are intended to highlight the  unworkability, unconstitutionality,  and unfairness of the health law and to hasten the slide of ObamaCare  down the slope towards repeal, and not uncoincidently, up the hill towards capture of both Houses of Congress in November 2014. 

Tweet:    The Treasury Department has announced  delay for  1 year  of  penalties for businesses of 50 workers or more who do not offer health insurance to those workers