Bloomberg reports:
The Obama administration will delay a crucial provision of its signature health-care law, giving businesses an extra year to comply with a requirement that they provide their workers with insurance.
The government will postpone enforcement of the so-called employer mandate until 2015, after the congressional elections, the administration said yesterday. Under the provision, companies with 50 or more workers face a fine of as much as $3,000 per employee if they don’t offer affordable insurance.
Why? Here’s why:
Forty-one percent of the businesses surveyed have frozen hiring because of the health-care law known as Obamacare. And almost one-fifth—19 percent— answered “yes” when asked if they had “reduced the number of employees you have in your business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act.”
(Via Hot Air.)
41% of small businesses have frozen hiring! And half of those are actually laying off workers. This is an utter catastrophe, and no less catastrophic for having been predicted.
The Democrats still dream of winning back the House in 2014 so they can have their way with America for Obama’s last two years, and there’s no way that can happen with the entire small-business segment of our economy in a coma due directly to their reckless, tyrannical policies.
POSTSCRIPT: And then there’s Nancy Pelosi being Nancy Pelosi:
The point is, is that the mandate was not delayed. Certain reporting by businesses that could be perceived as onerous, that reporting requirement was delayed, and partially to review how it would work and how it could be better. It was not a delay of the mandate for the businesses, and there shouldn’t be a delay of the mandate for individuals.
What a barrel of utter nonsense. The notion the mandate isn’t delayed, just the reporting, sounds like meaningless hair-splitting. Who cares if the mandate is in place, if no one has to pay it? And indeed it would be hair-splitting, except it isn’t even true. The administration did not only delayed the reporting requirements, they specifically delayed the mandate itself:
We recognize that this transition relief will make it impractical to determine which employers owe shared responsibility payments (under section 4980H) for 2014. Accordingly, we are extending this transition relief to the employer shared responsibility payments. These payments will not apply for 2014. Any employer shared responsibility payments will not apply until 2015.
Nancy Pelosi is simply a liar.
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