The Obama administration’s shocking decision not to enforce the employer mandate in Obamacare has gotten quite a bit of attention. (I wrote about it here over the weekend; Michael McConnell has a great piece on it in today’s WSJ).
I’d like to point out one implication that has largely escaped notice so far.
The administration and its supporters devoutly believe that the federal government should regulate every aspect of everything. They are rapidly turning the federal code into a nightmare straight out of the Soviet GOSPLAN.
Well, if you combine pervasive regulation of everything with the arbitrary power to suspend whatever law you like, what you get at the end of the day is arbitrary power to say what the law is. So, a tax on everyone’s income, minus the president’s suspension of the tax on people he likes, becomes simply a tax on whomever he doesn’t like. That’s just a dictatorship.
The administration’s refusal to execute duly enacted laws of Congress is a power grab against the most essential constitutional prerogatives of Congress. The House of Representatives needs to think very seriously about whether they’re going to let this administration get away with it. If refusing to see that the laws are faithfully executed is not an impeachable offense, maybe it should be.
At the very least, a resolution of censure is called for.