Like you, I’ve had time today to listen to the talking heads and read the blog posts on Obama delaying the rollout of the employer mandate (read Gabriel Malor’s discussion of what the mandate is). Erika Johnson has a good breakdown as to the massive job losses that will now be put off till after the 2014 midterms. Team O and the Democrats surely do not want the optics of lots and lots of layoffs couple with employees being downgraded from full to part time, plus all the lawsuits that would be filed, as they attempt to retake the House.
However, I believe Team O made a huge, huge mistake. First, it violates the law. The January 1, 2014 date is not a deadline that can be pushed off. It’s Christmas, it’s your birthday, your anniversary, tax day. It’s a scheduled court date. It’s “your power bill is due on..” There is no latitude. I’m interested to see what their excuse is for violating the very law they pushed for and extolled for years.
Second, this gives Republicans a huge talking point for the mid-terms. I suspect that Team O thought they were picking the lesser of two evils, the other being to let it start and deal with the fallout, and see a big Tea Party turnout. However, Conservatives will be out in force either way: this might bring lots more independents and moderates out to vote against Democrats, will leaving Dems sitting at home. Think of this talking point from Republicans:
Folks, you have a choice: you can vote for the Party which passed a bill that was so huge, so unwieldy, so damaging, so job killing, so impossible to implement that Democrat President Obama decided to violate the hard implementation date and push it off till 2015, after the elections occur, telling people that this was really, really hard to implement. Who would have thought a 2,000+ page bill which has generated over 20,000 pages of regulations (it will probably be more by election day) would be so difficult to implement?
Obamacare was opposed by the majority of Americans before it was passed, and hasn’t become anymore popular since. Sure, there are some parts that are popular, designed in the same way one might grind up horrible tasting medicine and mixing it with honey. Republicans have stood with you and attempted to repeal and replace Obamacare with common sense solutions. Democrats have stood with Mr. Obama on Obamacare, except when they need to get elected, then they don’t want to talk about it. “Obamacare? What’s that? Never heard of it” they’ll say.
Obama and the Democrats told us if we didn’t pass this citizens would die. Yet, they provided waiver after waiver for their campaign donors. Now they push the employer mandate off for a year….after the election….so doesn’t that mean, by their own talking points, that they want citizens to die?
Democrats are either playing games, trying to minimize the true pain that is caused by Obamacare in order to win the elections, or they’ve created a monstrosity that is impossible to implement. More than likely, both. Are these the types of people you want to trust in government?
Or something like that. I’m not a politician, I don’t speak politician.
I also have to wonder if Congressional Democrats were blindsided by this, and not just the rank and file, but Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid too boot. Obama’s relationship with them hasn’t been much better than his relationship with Congressional Republicans. Heck, Bush might have had a better relationship with Pelosi than Obama does. And their strategists might well be saying this is worse. If employers were laying people off and/or reducing hours down to part time, they could demonize the private sector. Not now.
We’ll see if Republicans have the fortitude to attack and demonize when election season is upon us. Or whether they’ll get squishy.
