Obama's Discretionary Enforcement of Obamacare Plan Has a Fatal Flaw -- But Don't Worry! He's OK!
maxgoof points out in "Discretionary Enforcement" that
Obama is claiming he can delay the enforcement of the Individual Mandate as well as the Employer Mandate through discretionary enforcement, basically saying, oh, we simply won't enforce that part of the law.
Okay, fine. But how then could you enforce the provision that required insurers to ignore existing conditions back in 2010 when the law itself said it would not be enforced until 2014?
Obama is correct: he can indeed as a PRACTICAL matter openly refuse to enforce a law. And he can even enforce an unconstitutional executive order, because the executive-branch agencies will obey his commands, even when they are blatantly unconstitutional (as we've seen in the IRS scandal). Yes, the courts may later strike down his decrees, but that will be after months to years of litigation, and in the meantime the insurance companies have to continue operating.
The real Constitutional remedy is for the Congress to impeach and convict him. The Congress is not yet exercised enough about his defiance of their authority to do any such thing. Right now, the Democrats would vote along strict party lines, and far too many Republicans just don't care enough about defending our Constitution to even make the effort, if it looks unlikely of success.
If anger over Obamacare continues to grow, the Congressmen may change their mind. If it grows enough, the composition of Congress may be changed after 2014 to one which will impeach him.
What Obama is not considering -- probably because it doesn't affect him, only those people unfortunate enough to have to live under Obamacare, is that the courts have to enforce the written version of Obamacare, not the version which Obama is making up as he goes along. The insurance companies know this, and they know that the courts cannot be counted on to enforce illegal contracts, and so what's going to happen is that a lot of people are going to be unable to find health care.
(It is possible that the courts will, for reasons of "public policy," enforce Obama's made-up version. It is possible that some courts will enforce the actual law and some courts enforce Obama's airy decrees. The problem is that an insurance company has no way of predicting which version will be enforced in any particular case. If they want to be responsible with their investors' money, the safest thing for any given insurance company to do is to pull out of any section of the market in which enforcement is unpredictable. This means that people who have been losing their policies won't be getting them back).
And a lot of people may well die while all this is being sorted out. Because, no matter what a law says, diseases don't wait until the courts have sorted things out, and Death isn't reversible by subsequent court order.
But don't worry! Obama and his family and his political cronies are all covered under other and better health care programs! So they'll be ok!
Aren't you happy?
Not happy? I can't imagine why, because I just said that our glorious Obamessiah and his family and those Very Important People heading all branches of government -- the Much Less Than One Percent -- will be ok. The people who will be ill without assistance, who may be dying, will only be unimportant people such as you and I. And it will serve the greater cause of making sure that Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States and Divinely-Chosen God-King of the World in His Own Mind, gets his way without any tiresome interference by the ghosts of Jefferson and Madison, which is after all the most important thing in the world, isn't it?
But if you really aren't happy, there's a simple solution. Vote Republican in 2014. If enough of you vote Republican, we can elect a Congress which will actually hold Obama responsible for the monstrous crime he's committing against both our Constitutional Republic and the people who are unfortunate enough to be seriously ill at a time when it becomes inconvenient to this grossly self-inflated creature that currently occupies the Oval Office. Elect a Congress who will impeach Obama, and convict Obama, and put Obama and his cronies where they belong -- in Federal prison, paying for their vile and destructive deeds.
Or -- perhaps more realistically because our Republic is almost dead and too many people in their heart of hearts do see Obama as sacrosanct -- at least removed from office so that he can't hurt any more people, and we can go about electing a new President in 2016 who can begin the process of national recovery from the disaster that is Obama.
And we deeply do not need any crap about whether or not we are voting in libertarians or religious rightists or big business conservatives or defense conservatives. Because if we get hung up on finding the perfect Republicans to vote into office, we are going to ensure that the Democrats keep getting elected. And if the Democrats keep getting elected, after screwing up THIS badly both from a Constitutional and policy viewpoint, then there will be no meaningful Constitutional checks on their actions.
Why should the Congress listen to us if we aren't prepared to put our votes where our mouths are? They want power, not favorable mention in the history books, and in any case if they can get enough power they'll get the favorable mention in the history books. Or so they imagine -- and who knows? They might be right. The Senators of the last few decades of the Roman Republic are still remembered by history -- for wrecking the Republic, 'tis true, but at least they're remembered. The Senators of the long centuries of the Republic's success have mostly been forgotten.
If we refuse to vote out the Democrats, then in 2014 the new Congress will be at least as compliant with Obama's wishes as is the current one, and in 2016 we will vote in another Democratic President (no, not Obama, his rival Democrats are too power-hungry to permit this -- they want their turns), and by 2020 or 2024 they'll have enough of a lock on the voting system that the people to watch won't be men who can attract votes, they'll be men who can command the loyalties of assassins and military forces, in the game of Coup vs. Coup that will start to relieve the by then viciously bottled-up frustrations of the American people. And the Republic will die.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We can still save the Republic -- preserve what most people call simply our democracy. But to do this, we have to start pulling together.
Otherwise, we'll have bought the right of our smarter descendants to be like Suetonius and Tacitus, mourning what is irretrivably lost, generations after the time when it actually could have been saved.
Obama is claiming he can delay the enforcement of the Individual Mandate as well as the Employer Mandate through discretionary enforcement, basically saying, oh, we simply won't enforce that part of the law.
Okay, fine. But how then could you enforce the provision that required insurers to ignore existing conditions back in 2010 when the law itself said it would not be enforced until 2014?
Obama is correct: he can indeed as a PRACTICAL matter openly refuse to enforce a law. And he can even enforce an unconstitutional executive order, because the executive-branch agencies will obey his commands, even when they are blatantly unconstitutional (as we've seen in the IRS scandal). Yes, the courts may later strike down his decrees, but that will be after months to years of litigation, and in the meantime the insurance companies have to continue operating.
The real Constitutional remedy is for the Congress to impeach and convict him. The Congress is not yet exercised enough about his defiance of their authority to do any such thing. Right now, the Democrats would vote along strict party lines, and far too many Republicans just don't care enough about defending our Constitution to even make the effort, if it looks unlikely of success.
If anger over Obamacare continues to grow, the Congressmen may change their mind. If it grows enough, the composition of Congress may be changed after 2014 to one which will impeach him.
What Obama is not considering -- probably because it doesn't affect him, only those people unfortunate enough to have to live under Obamacare, is that the courts have to enforce the written version of Obamacare, not the version which Obama is making up as he goes along. The insurance companies know this, and they know that the courts cannot be counted on to enforce illegal contracts, and so what's going to happen is that a lot of people are going to be unable to find health care.
(It is possible that the courts will, for reasons of "public policy," enforce Obama's made-up version. It is possible that some courts will enforce the actual law and some courts enforce Obama's airy decrees. The problem is that an insurance company has no way of predicting which version will be enforced in any particular case. If they want to be responsible with their investors' money, the safest thing for any given insurance company to do is to pull out of any section of the market in which enforcement is unpredictable. This means that people who have been losing their policies won't be getting them back).
And a lot of people may well die while all this is being sorted out. Because, no matter what a law says, diseases don't wait until the courts have sorted things out, and Death isn't reversible by subsequent court order.
But don't worry! Obama and his family and his political cronies are all covered under other and better health care programs! So they'll be ok!
Aren't you happy?
Not happy? I can't imagine why, because I just said that our glorious Obamessiah and his family and those Very Important People heading all branches of government -- the Much Less Than One Percent -- will be ok. The people who will be ill without assistance, who may be dying, will only be unimportant people such as you and I. And it will serve the greater cause of making sure that Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States and Divinely-Chosen God-King of the World in His Own Mind, gets his way without any tiresome interference by the ghosts of Jefferson and Madison, which is after all the most important thing in the world, isn't it?
But if you really aren't happy, there's a simple solution. Vote Republican in 2014. If enough of you vote Republican, we can elect a Congress which will actually hold Obama responsible for the monstrous crime he's committing against both our Constitutional Republic and the people who are unfortunate enough to be seriously ill at a time when it becomes inconvenient to this grossly self-inflated creature that currently occupies the Oval Office. Elect a Congress who will impeach Obama, and convict Obama, and put Obama and his cronies where they belong -- in Federal prison, paying for their vile and destructive deeds.
Or -- perhaps more realistically because our Republic is almost dead and too many people in their heart of hearts do see Obama as sacrosanct -- at least removed from office so that he can't hurt any more people, and we can go about electing a new President in 2016 who can begin the process of national recovery from the disaster that is Obama.
And we deeply do not need any crap about whether or not we are voting in libertarians or religious rightists or big business conservatives or defense conservatives. Because if we get hung up on finding the perfect Republicans to vote into office, we are going to ensure that the Democrats keep getting elected. And if the Democrats keep getting elected, after screwing up THIS badly both from a Constitutional and policy viewpoint, then there will be no meaningful Constitutional checks on their actions.
Why should the Congress listen to us if we aren't prepared to put our votes where our mouths are? They want power, not favorable mention in the history books, and in any case if they can get enough power they'll get the favorable mention in the history books. Or so they imagine -- and who knows? They might be right. The Senators of the last few decades of the Roman Republic are still remembered by history -- for wrecking the Republic, 'tis true, but at least they're remembered. The Senators of the long centuries of the Republic's success have mostly been forgotten.
If we refuse to vote out the Democrats, then in 2014 the new Congress will be at least as compliant with Obama's wishes as is the current one, and in 2016 we will vote in another Democratic President (no, not Obama, his rival Democrats are too power-hungry to permit this -- they want their turns), and by 2020 or 2024 they'll have enough of a lock on the voting system that the people to watch won't be men who can attract votes, they'll be men who can command the loyalties of assassins and military forces, in the game of Coup vs. Coup that will start to relieve the by then viciously bottled-up frustrations of the American people. And the Republic will die.
But it doesn't have to be that way. We can still save the Republic -- preserve what most people call simply our democracy. But to do this, we have to start pulling together.
Otherwise, we'll have bought the right of our smarter descendants to be like Suetonius and Tacitus, mourning what is irretrivably lost, generations after the time when it actually could have been saved.