The President's Lawlessness

President Obama announced today that "he will allow" insurance companies to "renew for one year any health plans that do not meet Obamacare's coverage standards." The announcement prompted this reaction from Timothy Sandefur:

Amazing. The Obama Administration has decided to temporarily "fix" the mess they've made—by simply withholding enforcement of the law they championed. That is to say, by allowing people to break the law. Again. I mean, that's what happened with the Employer Mandate, also: it wasn't "delayed," as the news stories put it. What happened was that the Administration simply instructed administrative agencies not to enforce the law's requirements.

As Christina and I observe in an article coming in the next issue of Regulation, this sort of behavior indicates a profound failing with Obamacare: one that runs much deeper than the policy problems that have been the focus of recent debates. From its unconstitutional origin, to the rewrite that the Roberts Court put on the law, to the unconstitutional delegation of lawmaking power to unelected, independent bureaucrats, to the halting and unpredictable manner in which it is being enforced or not--depending on political pressure—Obamacare has been a sustained assault on the concept of the rule of law itself.