Posted on 11/30/2013 4:11:39 PM PST by xzins
For purely partisan reasons, the Obama administration cynically unveiled extra-legal plans on the eve of Thanksgiving to unilaterally delay the launch of a website for small businesses to select plans through federal health care insurance exchanges.
It’s just the latest sleazy political move by the Community-Organizer-in-Chief to salvage his party’s fading electoral prospects by delaying at least some of the approaching tens of millions of health insurance policy cancellations until after the national vote next November.
It is also a sign of the Obama White House’s growing desperation over the political ramifications surrounding the grotesque failings of Obamacare. The administration said Wednesday it will unilaterally delay the upcoming launch of the online portal for small businesses. The website, which would allow small businesses to window-shop plans through the federal health insurance exchanges, won’t be ready for another year.
President Obama, whose political stature seems to shrink almost hourly, is feverishly trying to keep congressional Democrats aboard his sinking political ship. On Capitol Hill, Democratic lawmakers are now openly panicking at the damage the growing public backlash over Obamacare is going to inflict on their standings in the next Congress. Recent developments suggest that an electoral tsunami is developing that threatens to drown Democrats and give Republicans a healthy majority in the Senate.
The new one-year small business signup delay is just the latest in a series of unilaterally imposed deadline changes. One allows consumers to enroll until Dec. 23 — instead of Dec. 15 — to get coverage in time for the new year. The president also announced plans to push back the beginning of individual enrollment next year from Oct. 15 to Nov. 15, or after the 2014 midterm congressional elections. Obama has no legal authority to do this but he doesn’t care.
As Obama, a one-time part-time constitutional law lecturer ought to know, obstructing the implementation of a duly enacted federal law by refusing to enforce it in order to secure partisan political advantage almost certainly rises to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” as the Framers of the Constitution recognized when they wrote the presidential impeachment provision in Article 2, Section 4 of the Constitution. Of course, hardly a day goes by in Obama’s increasingly imperial presidency without the Chief Executive creating new grounds for his own impeachment, and so this latest outrage is, unfortunately, barely newsworthy.
The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) that is being delayed was supposed to help small businesses by providing tax credits that could be used to defray the cost of premiums, according to the Washington Times.
“In the case of SHOP, the administration said that online tool won’t be ready until November 2014. Department of Health and Human Services officials said they are still allowing enrollment through agents, brokers and insurers in the federal marketplace.
Businesses with fewer than 50 employees, which are not required to offer coverage under the Affordable Care Act, can compare plans online starting Dec. 1, even if they have to rely on non-Internet applications to qualify for tax credits and gain coverage for employees, officials said.”
Republicans say this is the latest indication that Obamacare should be repealed outright.
“The president bit off more than he can chew with this health care law, and small businesses are now forced to bear the consequences,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio).
House Small Business Committee chairman Sam Graves (R-Mo.) said that “another last-minute delay is just more proof that the law is unworkable and beyond the capabilities of the administration.” He added, “if small firms failed to provide services this frequently, they would be fired.”
Although Obamacare critics may be enjoying some well-deserved schadenfreude at the expense of the Obama administration as the bureaucratically bungled HealthCare.gov enrollment website launched Oct. 1 continues to malfunction, the president’s law is still helping to wreak havoc among health care consumers and cause upheaval in the health care industry, just as it was designed to do. No websites have to be functioning properly in order for Obamacare to collapse the system.
Government officials are still trying to fix the federal website, which is used in the 36 states that chose not to create their own health insurance exchanges. They say the website should be working for the “vast majority” of users in the individual market this weekend, but they’re probably guilty of wishful thinking at best, or of lying, at worst.
Health insurers have already dropped –or in Obama-speak, “transitioned”– at least five million Americans from their health plans despite President Obama’s oft-repeated promise that under Obamacare all Americans would be allowed to keep their current policies. And tens of millions more –perhaps more than 1 in 2 of all persons insured through their employers– will be pushed over the cliff next year as various provisions of the Affordable Care Act come into force.
Calculating left-wingers counted on being able to blame the insurance companies for the wave of policy cancellations, but so far the public isn’t buying it. Americans know President Obama lied over and over again about how Obamacare would work and his already-abysmal public approval ratings continue to fall. Too many people are experiencing real hardship as the Affordable Care Act causes their insurance to be canceled — and they know who to blame for their pain and suffering.
Stung by public anger and his rapidly plunging approval ratings, President Obama cried crocodile tears earlier this month as he tendered his now-infamous non-apology apology for lying about Americans being able to keep their plans.
Around that time he also proposed delaying the cancellation of existing health care insurance policies for one year. The House of Representatives responded quickly, approving Congressman Fred Upton’s (R-Mich.) quixotic legislation that would supposedly allow Americans to keep their insurance plans. No one knows how the statute would actually work in the real world.
The legal infrastructure of the health care insurance market has been changed. Policies were canceled because they don’t subsidize all the new services that Obamacare mandates. Those policies no longer exist for a reason. Insurers can’t just push a button and bring them back into existence.
Obama’s bizarre pronouncements reflect leftists’ disdain and ignorance of market processes, and the president’s determination to proceed in defiance of those processes. A locomotive going 60 miles per hour can’t stop instantly when brakes are activated. Nor can the Obamacare juggernaut which has so many moving parts spread out over such a wide area that locking up one part of the beast won’t stop it from continuing to barrel forward.
But Obama wants to have a Communist Chinese-style rubber-stamp Congress for the final two years of his presidency.
As Obama sees it, in order to accomplish this almost unprecedented feat he has to distance himself from the most visible damage that is being inflicted on society by his signature legislative achievement. He has to pretend to try to mitigate the damage done by Obamacare.
Obama will do whatever he feels he has to do, including lying and demonizing Republicans, in order to gain total control over Congress.
Strap yourself in for 11 months of intensified class warfare, overblown rhetoric, and shameless mendacity.
But Obama wants to have a Communist Chinese-style rubber-stamp Congress for the final two years of his presidency.
As Obama sees it, in order to accomplish this almost unprecedented feat he has to distance himself from the most visible damage that is being inflicted on society by his signature legislative achievement. He has to pretend to try to mitigate the damage done by Obamacare.
Obama will do whatever he feels he has to do, including lying and demonizing Republicans, in order to gain total control over Congress.
Strap yourself in for 11 months of intensified class warfare, overblown rhetoric, and shameless mendacity.
Obamacare should be repealed outright.
Obamacare should be repealed outright.
Obamacare should be repealed outright!
Let’s see if the Republicans’ testicles will drop. Maybe someone other than Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee will call this CRAP for what it is: unlawful behaviour by the Clown.
I still do not understand how this guy can treat this like his own play toy and do with it as he pleases. It’s the friking law now yet he continues to change things and no one stops him or even complains. What an inept congress we have, unfrikingbelieveable.
The Senate belongs to the democrats, so we’ll get no action from them, but you’d at least like to hear rumblings.
The House should be raising holy hell, but they aren’t.
They attacked Cruz and Lee far more than they are Obama.
Obama picking winner and losers raises questions whether Obamacare is an illegal lottery. B/c Obamacare specifically picks winners and losers, a court might deem this an illegal lottery.
EXAMPLE Everyone is induced into paying into the program. Some people win subsidies, tax breaks, deferments, etc.....while others are excluded from benefits.
REFERENCE: The following is an example of a Federal Statute defining Lottery:
According to 12 USCS § 25a, “lottery" includes any arrangement whereby three or more persons (the "participants") advance money or credit to another in exchange for the possibility or expectation that one or more but not all of the participants (the "winners") will receive by reason of their advances more than the amounts they have advanced, the identity of the winners being determined by any means which includes--
(A) a random selection;
(B) a game, race, or contest; or
(C) any record or tabulation of the result of one or more events in which any participant has no interest except for its bearing upon the possibility that he may become a winner. (SOURCE uslegal.com/lotteries)
It’s called SHOP: Small Business Health Options Program. Liberals love their acronyms. They frequently pick acronyms that they subsequently figure out what they stand for. This one was particularly difficult. SBHOP. SuBuHop... SebHop...SHOP! The B is silent. (They don’t care about small business, just small. So if you are in business, be silent.)
BINGO!..But rest assured....When the “Market Process” bites them in their own ass....The howling and gnashing of teeth is worth the price of admission!
Ive been watching it lately...Ive lost a lot of my compassion for some of my liberal friends.... But I still cant bring myself to say.....I told u so!...makes me seem arrogant and petty because I wont “lend” them more of MY MONEY on their meager collateral...
EXACTLY!
I was told that the R’s were looking for a new spokesman for the House, I texted my congressman and he agreed I would be a great spokesman. What the hell happened? I have no clue.
They have no one with a set of balls to stand up and call these people out. It’s infuriating to say the least.
You have liberal “friends”? Egads.
You've never understood the philosophy of “Keeping your friends close...But your enemy's closer??”
“But Obama wants to have a Communist Chinese-style rubber-stamp Congress for the final two years of his presidency.”
I predict that the 2014 mid-term elections will involve levels of vote fraud never before seen in this country. The dhims MUST hold the Senate no matter the cost.
The healthcare act can't be repealed because the Democrat majority in the senate wouldn't vote for it, in fact, Reid wouldn't even bring it up for a vote.
The only way to get rid of it is to have a big enough majority in the senate to override Hussein's veto of the bill to repeal the healthcare law, the house and senate would pass.
Hussein can't be impeached/kicked out until we get a majority in the senate. The house impeaches, then it goes to the senate for trial, then a vote is taken to complete the impeachment and toss Hussein out on his butt.
I remember the impeachment of Clinton - the house did their part but the senate after the trial, did not have enough votes to kick him out.
The Right is this country has shockingly tiny balls, scared of the domestic marxist propagandists in the press going all Joe McCarthy on them.
The tide against the red menace that the Democratic Party represents won’t start to turn until the Right stops playing word games with the the red sons of bitches in DC and academia and calls them exactly what they are.
Domestic communists in a party that has been taken over by the CPUSA.
And when the right gets back in power it will be payback time.
Laws have been broken by these communist bastards, and they need to be prosecuted , persecuted, and imprisoned.
You dont fight the commies by making nice and playing by the rules.
On positive thing Vacation Guy has done is re-establish the precedent that Lincoln set that the POTUS can assume Dictatorial power as long as there is no controlling legal authority to stop him.
The commie unions, press, front organizations and apparatchiks have no idea what is coming down on them when the Right gets the power.
Violations of US Constitution File for the 2014 Impeachment of arrogant “B. Hussein Obama,” also known as Barry Soetoro, a legal citizen of the Sovereign Nation of Indonesia.
Nonsense. The goal was to make insurance so expensive that the middle class would be forced onto Medicaid as a matter of "social justice": "Whitey" gets the same medical care as illegal aliens.
If the Democrats in Congress want to win reelection or have any other Democrats win in 2014, they ought to impeach Obama now and remove him from office.
Obama is Law-Less because Republican Leaders are BALL-Less!!
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