Delaying the Employer Mandate: Unconstitutional Authority

George Will is out with a new column on President Obama’s unilateral decision to suspend the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate.

The statutory language of the ACA requires that the employer mandate enter into effect at the beginning of 2014; however, President Obama directed the executive branch not to enforce this provision of the Act.

Obama effectively amended the legislation. There’s just one problem: he didn’t go through Congress, which the Constitution’s separation of powers would seem to require.

Pressed on the issue, President Obama argued that the current political environment is not “normal”, justifying his extraordinary exercise of power.

In response to the President’s overstep, George Will writes:

Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.

Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy. He consulted with businesses before disregarding his constitutional dutyto “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political environment” is not “normal.”

When was it “normal”? The 1850s? The 1950s? Washington has been the nation’s capital for 213 years; Obama has been here less than nine. Even if he understood “normal” political environments here, the Constitution is not suspended when a president decides the “environment” is abnormal.

You can read George Will’s entire column in the Washington Post here. For another take on the issue check out this post.