King Responds to President Obama Delaying ObamaCare's Employer Mandate

Washington, DC - Congressman Steve King released the following statement after the Obama Administration announced it would not enforce ObamaCare's employer mandate until 2015. The employer mandate, which requires businesses to provide health insurance for their employees or pay a penalty, was scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of 2014. The Obama Administration made the announcement yesterday via a blog post by the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the Treasury Department on Treasury.gov.

"If President Obama wants to make changes to ObamaCare, he must come to Congress," said King. "Two years ago, the Obama Administration, through a memo from a Homeland Security Department bureaucrat, declared it would not enforce our nation's immigration laws. Now the Obama Administration, through a blog post by an Assistant Secretary in the Treasury Department, is declaring it won't even enforce its own health care law on employers. We live in a Constitutional Republic. We are a nation governed by laws written by Congress, not memos and blog posts written by bureaucrats.

Congress has made changes to ObamaCare before. Since its inception, Congress has enacted at least seven different bills repealing or defunding at least eight different ObamaCare provisions. And while the President and his allies have criticized the House's repeated votes to repeal, defund, or delay aspects of ObamaCare, yesterday's action by the Obama Administration shows that the House's actions have been rooted in the universal recognition of the real-world effects his disastrous health care law is having and will continue to have on businesses and everyday Americans.

While this temporary bailout for employers will delay some of the job-killing effects of the President's health care law, it will do nothing to provide relief for everyday Americans who are experiencing spikes in their health insurance costs. The law requires ObamaCare's employer mandate to be implemented in each month after December 31, 2013. President Obama has no constitutional authority to amend his own bill. He has no constitutional authority to simply waive the law. No matter Obama's determination to suspend his own law, only Congress can do so."