Reality Hitting Obama Care

wednesday, Jul 03 2013 12AM  71°F 3AM 71°F 5-Day Forecast

Obamacare employer mandate delayed until 2015 to give Democrats breathing room until after 2014 midterm elections, says Treasury source

By David Martosko In Washington

Obamacare penalties - what the Supreme Court called 'taxes' - are the teeth in the law's enforcement mechanisms, but the administration has decided to hold off fining anyone for noncompliance until at least 2015

A Treasury Department official who declined to be named confirmed to MailOnline on Tuesday that the Obama administration will not begin enforcing employer mandates in the Obamacare law until 2015 - one year later than originally planned - and pinned that change of direction on a combination of politics and economic realities in the marketplace.

Mark Mazur, the Assistant Treasury Secretary for Tax Policy, announced on the agency's blog that the administration 'will provide an additional year before the ... mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin.'

The blog post explained that the delay was intended to leave time to simplify reporting requirements and give companies time to adapt.

But the Treasury source said the extra year will give the White House an extra year to persuade health insurers to participate in the exchanges that make up the backbone of the Affordable Care Act.

The revised timetable, the source added, will also push back the final implementation of Obamacare's penalties past the 2014 midterm elections, providing Republicans fewer chances to highlight the law's potentially harmful effects on businesses' bottom lines.

Boy, reality really hurts. Team Obama is finally catching on to the fact that the rushed ill-conceived PACA biil is loaded with serious flaws. Dems have been complaining that this issue could be a killer for them in 2014, so the White House is backing off the implementation. Good, maybe they'll come to senses and use the extra year to fix the deficiencies in this monstrosity, How many more companies are going to reduce their workers hours to under 30 per week so that they don't have to be covered? The real solution to this problem will never be dealt with, that is decoupling healthcare from employment. That would force the insurance companies to be competitive just as they are in auto, life and homeowners insurance. Imagine if they were based on employment?

More Clap-Trap From Clapper

James Clapper is still lying to America

A smoking gun shows Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is a big liar -- and it's not the first time

By David Sirota

Topics: James Clapper, NSA, Edward Snowden, National Intelligence Council, perjury, Lies, Congress, Media Criticism, Barack Obama, fourth amendment, Editor's Picks, Politics News

James Clapper (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

“James Clapper Is Still Lying”: That would be a more honest headline for yesterday’s big Washington Post article about the director of national intelligence’s letter to the U.S. Senate.
Clapper, you may recall, unequivocally said “no, sir” in response to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asking him: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” Clapper’s response was shown to be a lie by Snowden’s disclosures, as well as by reports from the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News (among others). This is particularly significant, considering lying before Congress prevents the legislative branch from performing oversight and is therefore a felony.
Upon Snowden’s disclosures, Clapper initially explained his lie by insisting that his answer was carefully and deliberately calculated to be the “least untruthful” response to a question about classified information. Left unmentioned was the fact that he could have simply given the same truthful answer that Alberto Gonzales gave the committee in 2006.

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Now, though, Clapper is wholly changing his story, insisting that his answer wasn’t a deliberate, carefully calibrated “least most untruthful” response; it was instead just a spur-of-the-moment accident based on an innocent misunderstanding. Indeed, as the Post reports, “Clapper sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 21 saying that he had misunderstood the question he had been asked” and adding that “he thought Wyden was referring to NSA surveillance of e-mail traffic involving overseas targets, not the separate program in which the agency is authorized to collect records of Americans’ phone calls.” In his letter, Clapper says, “My response was clearly erroneous — for which I apologize,” and added that “mistakes will happen, and when I make one, I correct it.”
So Clapper first says it was a calculated move, and now he’s saying it was just an innocuous misunderstanding and an inadvertent error. With that, the public — and the Obama administration prosecutors who aggressively pursue perjurers — are all supposed to now breathe a sigh of relief and chalk it all up to a forgivable screw-up. It’s all just an innocent mistake, right?
Wrong, because in this crime, as Clapper’s changing story suggests, there remains a smoking gun.

Why is this man still employed by the federal government? Why hasn't the President fired him for clearly committing perjury?  The most galling aspect of this charade is that Sen. Wyden told Clapper a day in advance the question that would be asked precisely so that he could give a clear answer. Seriously, people, how much of this nonsense do we have to put up with? Does it matter whether it's Bush or Obama? It's unacceptable under any circumstances.