What's Good For The Goose...

My guess is it's only good for geese with a (D) after their name:

On the cusp of the July 4 holiday weekend, President Obama quietly announced (via an underling’s blog post) that he had unilaterally chosen to delay Obamacare’s employer mandate—its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally approved health insurance. Obama claims to possess the legal authority to choose not to execute this aspect of the law that he spearheaded and signed, despite the fact that Obamacare’s text declares that the Shared Responsibility for Employers Regarding Health Coverage provision, commonly known as the employer mandate, “shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.”

That’s almost exactly the same language that Obamacare uses to refer to the starting date for its budget-busting exchange subsidies. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, over the next ten years, Obamacare would funnel a colossal $1.212 trillion from American taxpayers, through Washington bureaucrats, to insurance companies—the ultimate recipients of those subsidies. Obamacare’s text states that the subsidies “shall apply to taxable years ending after December 31, 2013.”

So, if Obama can unilaterally decide not to execute Obamacare’s employer-mandate provisions (which “shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013”), does this mean that a future Republican president can unilaterally decide not to execute its exchange-subsidy provisions (which “shall apply to taxable years ending after December 31, 2013”)? If Obama can grant himself what Nebraska Senate hopeful Ben Sasse calls a de facto “line-item veto” over parts of an existing law, then couldn’t a future Republican president grant himself that same power and wield it over different parts of that same law? If Obama isn’t constrained to execute laws as written, wouldn’t a future GOP president enjoy similar liberties?

I don't want this to be how our government operates. If it is to operate that way, though, I don't want my side to play by the old rules. Let both sides do this until the issue is resolved, one way or another.