"Republicans Steamed At Employer Mandate Delay — For All The Wrong Reasons"

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Republicans Steamed At Employer Mandate Delay — For All The Wrong Reasons

by Brian Beutler at TPM

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/07/republicans-steamed-at-employer-mandate-delay----for-all-the-wrong-reasons.php

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But if the employer mandate snafu were as bad and as symptomatic as Republicans would have you believe, they’d treat it as vindication — a cause for celebration. As we and others have reported, though, the employer mandate exists at the margins of the law’s core functions. The decision to delay it for a year sidelines one liability that would have harmed the law’s rollout, robs Republicans (temporarily, but during an election year) of a legitimate public critique of the law’s real-life effects, and ironically strengthens the state-based insurance exchanges, which are the must-work components of the ACA.

Thus Republicans are torn between a feeling of satisfaction that the administration has effectively copped to the employer mandate’s problems, and of frustration that a problematic provision won’t be taking effect right away, before next year’s midterm elections.

“I want to know why, after repeated assurances that everything was on track and that no more deadlines would be missed, that the Administration has taken this action,” said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the chair of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, in a statement accompanying the announcement of a July 10 hearing on the delay. “It is time for the Administration to explain to the American people why it’s acceptable to grant this delay, while at the same time taking no action whatsoever to provide any relief from the individual mandate.”

Republicans like Brady are predictably using the employer mandate decision to argue that other, more consequential measures in the law — like the individual mandate — should be delayed as well. But it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to recognize what’s really going on. Republicans are still committed to the far-fetched objective of repealing Obamacare, and as such have effectively vowed not to work with the administration to fix any of its dysfunctional provisions. To the contrary, the GOP is committed to creating implementation problems where they can, and to making sure existing problems are never fixed, to make the whole program a liability for Democrats.




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