Obamacare delays highlight the dangers of an ever-expanding government
By completely restructuring how health care works in the US, those responsible for implementing the Affordable Care Act are restructuring and controlling what today amounts to about 15% of the U.S. economy.
With that in mind, after having 4 years to prepare for this, they still are not ready to implement a major portion of it. The Obama administration has stated that it will not have the capacity to collect from employers the information required to determine which employers will be subject to penalties in 2014. Thus it will not require employers to report that information until 2015, even though the very statute that this Administration pushed through Congress requires employers to furnish that information in 2014. This doesn’t exactly instill confidence in the government’s ability to improve our healthcare system not does it? 
Four year and they can’t even collect data!
The employer-mandate penalties unequivocally take effect on January 1, 2014. When Congress passed this Act, it gave the Treasury Secretary no authority to postpone the implementation, which is not unusual. Congress rarely passes anything giving other parts of the government discretion over how and when to implement. This would be akin to Congress raising or lowering tax rates, but then telling the Treasury it can decided when it wants to implement those changes, “Ehhh, next year or maybe the year after. Whenever you can get around to it.”
The statute gives the Treasury secretary the authority to collect these penalties “on an annual, monthly, or other periodic basis as the Secretary may prescribe.” It does not allow the secretary to waive the imposition of such penalties, unless the State has implemented an acceptable health insurance program for its residents. Then the Treasury is allowed to waive the imposition until 2017.
So here we have a clear example that Congress did in fact contemplate giving the Treasury the ability to waive penalties, but decided to do so ONLY under specific conditions.
If one wants to continue to try and argue that the Treasury does in fact have the ability to waive parts of the ACA, then what is the limit of the Treasury’s ability to waive any portion? If it can extend 1 year, why not 5 or 10 or 500? What authority then does Congress have to enforce the very Act it passed?
Now the Republicans, seeing clear signs of distress from their opposition, are trying to take advantage, as is always the way in DC. They are saying that if businesses get a one year waiver, individuals should too.
No wonder American’s have less respect for their government than at any other time in history. Those in DC, whether it be Congress, the President and his Administration, the Treasury and the IRS, have no respect for the very laws they pass and are charged with enforcing and are even comfortable exempting themselves from them! This is exactly what one would expect to happen when you have a government that has grown entirely too large and is beyond unruly.