The Detroit News editorial staff talking Constitution? You know things are getting worse.

November 19, 2013 in News by The Manimal

Source: Detroit News

Congress Races To Hammer Out Deal For Bailout Legi

There’s no question Obamacare needs fixing, and more likely a wholesale rewrite. But that can’t be done piecemeal by the president without congressional input and approval.

When President Barack Obama last week gave states the option of allowing insurance companies to extend current health care policies for another year, he was careful to say he was not changing the Affordable Care Act that Congress had passed. That would be an affront to Constitutional separation of powers.

Instead, Obama said he was exercising his “enforcement discretion” to not impose the prescribed penalties for non-compliance.

But no such discretion exists in the Constitution. The document very clearly states the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” It does not allow the president to rewrite a law once it passes Congress and obtains his signature, nor does it allow him to ignore it. Not enforcing a law is little different than unilaterally repealing it.

It’s a natural condition of the presidency to push the limits of authority, and most presidents attempt to define their powers as broadly as possible.

In Obama’s case, the courts haven’t yet ruled on the legality of whether a president can choose which laws, or which parts of laws, he enforces. He claimed that authority earlier this year in suspending Obamacare’s mandate on employers.

And he did the same last year he when ordered the Justice Department to stop the deportment of undocumented immigrants and instead offer them legal status and work permits in defiance of federal immigration law.

For sure it is a lot less hassle to ignore a law than to change it. But the checks and balances built into the Constitution exist for a reason.

An uncooperative and hostile House does not excuse the president’s attempt to send Congress to the sidelines.

Lawmakers wrote and passed this law; if it is to be substantively changed, that process must start in the Congress.

The president should draft his desired changes to the Affordable Care Act and send them to Congress. This will allow for the essential debate on whether the proposed fixes will only make matters worse.

Insurance companies and state regulators are raising legitimate concerns that the delay the president allowed will upend 2½ years of work done by insurers ahead of the Jan. 1 deadline for implementing Obamacare.

Most of the changes required by the law have already been made. Undoing that work even temporarily will be costly, and those costs will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums.

The president should go back to Congress and ask for a comprehensive reworking of the law. If he makes that request, it should be met by the Republican-controlled House in the spirit of heading off a crisis. The disintegration of Obamacare may be a political boon for the GOP in 2014, but it would be a disaster for the country. This is an opportunity for Republicans to have a voice in the health care bill.

Unlike when the law was passed in a hurry on a straight Democratic vote, we know now what Obamacare does. The angst Americans are feeling over canceled policies and soaring premiums is real.

This is the time to fix it. But the fixes must be made through the Constitutional lawmaking process, and not by presidential fiat.