Not all of these are major impact deadlines, but they are written into the boondoggle that had to be passed before we could see what was in it:
As of May 31, 2013, when the CRS analysis was completed, the White House had yet to meet 9 of 12 deadlines from the first year after the Affordable Care Act was enacted. It failed to meet 22 of 53 deadlines in the second year; another 8 became moot after Congress did not appropriate funds to complete the assigned tasks. In year three, the administration missed 10 out of 17 deadlines. That’s a total of 41 out of 82 deadlines missed.
If you exclude the 9 deadlines that became moot because Congress never appropriated the funds to meet them, the Obama administration missed 41 out of 73 deadlines, or 56 percent.
Are we even a nation of laws anymore? It's not just Obamacare, there are a whole host of major issues out there where both the letter and the spirit of the law seem to have been shattered.
Just last week the Attorney General of the United States decided that his department would deceive federal courts and not enforce certain drug laws with mandatory sentences because the Obama administration simply decided they didn't like them. Getting rid of some mandatory sentences makes sense to me, but the proper way to enact such a policy is through Congress and changing the law. Doing it by executive fiat blows us way past reasonable prosecutorial discretion and into banana republic territory.
How about unilaterally implementing much of the Dream Act even though it couldn't pass Congress? Or illegal IRS activities. Or the growing sense that the NSA has gone completely rogue in the name of national security. If some sort of immigration reform passes Congress, does anyone believe Obama will actually enforce the parts of the law that he doesn't like?
How about just ignoring the coup in Egypt by simply deciding not to call it a coup? I don't think we should cut off aid to Egypt, but the solution for that is to call on Congress to change the law, not to simply ignore what the law demands.
There's plenty of talk these days about what Obama's legacy will be, but even the disaster of Obamacare will pale in comparison to the damage he is doing to the rule of law in this country. And when the rule of law collapses, all sorts of other institutions in civil society lose their foundation.
Obama's real legacy may just be a nation of people who ask, "If the President of the United States doesn't give a shit about the law, why should I?"
Recent Comments