If Obama Won’t Obey Law, Why Should We?

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Public support for Obamacare cratered to 26 percent in a recent poll.
Nonetheless, the left-wing media continue to support the law, often misleadingly.

For example, the lead to a story written by Alec MacGillis at the liberal New Republic declared: "The Supreme Court oral arguments on the challenge by two businesses of the Affordable Care Act’s mandates on contraception coverage have gotten … attention today, understandably … given the import of that case for future disputes pitting claims of religious freedom against duly legislated laws."

"Duly legislated" and "court-upheld" are terms the left employs to somehow add rhetorical heft to Obamacare, a liberal-favored but otherwise unpopular "law of the land."

But you will never hear them apply those words to other "duly legislated" laws like the Defense of Marriage Act or court decisions like Citizens United.
In this case, though, MacGillis is doubly misleading. The mandate to provide contraception coverage doesn’t appear in the grotesquely-named Affordable Care Act.

It was an administration directive imposed through one or more of the twenty thousand-plus pages of regulations issued by executive branch agencies which provide Obamacare "guidance."

Legislative language and administration regulations aren’t the same things — laws and regulations carry different legal weights.
Obamacare’s media backers are misrepresenting the case as a conflict between secular law and religious dissenters. That’s false.

The plaintiffs in the case, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties, argue that the contraception mandate violates a genuine "duly legislated" law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.

Their case really highlights a conflict between a law "duly legislated" by Congress and an executive branch Obamacare diktat from which contraception exclusions for religious nonprofit groups have already been granted — a distinction clearly missed by Justice Elena Kagen and her clerks who appear to have read as much of the law as the congressional Democrats who passed it.
Even reporter Sahil Kapur, worries that laws may trump regulations — especially when executive regulations have been applied inconsistently.

But, for now, we’ll leave the decision to the Supreme Court and turn back to Obamacare — as written.

When passed, the Obamacare law was given more than three years for implementation. It detailed specific deadlines for each of the law’s features. No exceptions were specified or implied.

But, in November, 2012, only one day before the original deadline, the president’s Department of Health and Human Services gave states an extra month to decide whether they would set up their own health insurance exchanges.
In July, 2013, the administration delayed enforcement of fines for noncompliance with the employer mandate.

In November, 2013 enrollment was delayed for small business health insurance exchanges, and open enrollment for individual exchanges was pushed out by a month.

Then, in December, HealthCare.gov’s potential individual customers were given a two-week extension of the enrollment deadline for 2014 coverage.

In January of this year, high risk pool enrollment was delayed, and in February, the employer mandate was delayed until after the November midterm election.
Last month, the final enrollment deadline was extended past the "official" March 31, 2014 enrollment deadline for people with unspecified "special circumstances" – to be "enforced" on an "honor system."

In other words, other than for the people who didn’t enroll, there are no exceptions for enrolling in Obamacare.

Problems caused by the administration’s inept rollout of Obamacare aside, the calculus for all of the unauthorized – and, therefore, illegal — delays and changes has clearly been political, timed to obscure the law’s pain beyond the 2014 midterm election, and, in some cases, beyond 2016.

If, as we are constantly reminded, Obamacare is the "duly legislated" "law of the land," why hasn’t the president complied with and enforced it? And, if the president himself has violated the law, why is his administration spending so much time and resources on a Supreme Court sideshow by attempting to enforce a contraception mandate which isn’t even in it?

The administration’s lawlessness begs another question: Because the president hasn’t upheld his signature "duly legislated" law, why hasn’t Congress, the branch which passed Obamacare, acted on its constitutional prerogatives and held the president legally responsible for his violations and failures?

Finally, if the president won’t obey the law, why should Americans?

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