Obamacare’s Slimiest Side

In the sharp words of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, “ ‘ObamaCare’ is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day.” The latest executive branch “tweak,” announced earlier this week, delays the already-delayed employer mandate another year.

Conservatives are right to be outraged that the president is unilaterally rewriting his signature law (illegal by even a generous accounting), particularly as he snipes at opponents who seek to repeal or amend the law by, you know, legislative (read: legal) means.

But a particularly interesting gem is hidden in this latest diktat. Per Fox News: “Treasury officials said Monday that businesses will be told to ‘certify’ that they are not shedding full-time workers simply to avoid the mandate. Officials said employers will be told to sign a ‘self-attestation’ on their tax forms affirming this, under penalty of perjury.” Translation: When businesses start firing workers because of Obamacare’s oppressive regulations, they have to swear—swear, by golly!—that the firings have nothing to do with Obamacare. Or else.

Set aside the “thought police” flavor of this, and its almost laughable idiocy. The Obamacare rollout has been a carnival of lawlessness, political underhandedness, and deceit. But this development is particularly alarming, because it invites the public to join in the vices that have been, in all of this, generally restricted to the political class. Surely no one is so naïve as to believe that companies that lay off workers to avoid the worst parts of Obamacare are going to then confess their misdeeds to the IRS (not known, especially recently, for its evenhandedness). So this requirement extends the invitation to lie and to cheat to millions—and, for those who want to keep their business afloat and their criminal records clean, demands it.

Under-the-table deals, blind eyes turned—corruption is a reality of government. But a responsible government does not incentivize it! Yet that is exactly what this requirement does. One need not think the government needs to be the arbiter of virtue to think that it would do well to at least not propagate vice.