Scrap the ObamaCare employer mandate

A recent Politico article, “Why liberals are abandoning the employer mandate,” highlights the growing list of liberal policy advocates and analysts who now favor scrapping the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, employer mandate. Originally scheduled to take effect in January of this year, this provision has already been delayed twice. The facts about the destructive...

A recent Politico article, “Why liberals are abandoning the employer mandate,” highlights the growing list of liberal policy advocates and analysts who now favor scrapping the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, employer mandate. Originally scheduled to take effect in January of this year, this provision has already been delayed twice.

The facts about the destructive nature of the employer mandate are no longer in dispute.  Opponents of scrapping the employer mandate are simply putting their political goals ahead of preserving economic opportunity for the low-wage workers who will be adversely impacted by the law.

Research by the Illinois Policy Institute has shown that it is the workers in the nation’s lowest-paid sectors who may already be suffering the greatest harm through involuntary cuts to their work hours as a result of ObamaCare. This effect has been widely acknowledged by both supporters and opponents of the president’s signature legislation.

Whether the mandate will actually be scrapped may come down to the question of how to replace the $100 billion that the law was expected to raise in employer penalties over the next decade.

According to the Politico article: “The main downside to eliminating the mandate, from the Democratic perspective? Money.”

Given the mandate’s harmful effects ─ widely acknowledged on both sides of the aisle ─ failure to repeal the mandate is a tacit admission that political posturing trumps economic opportunity for low-wage workers. And furthermore that no matter the cost, steep fines will be squeezed out of the nation’s job creators to fund this calamitous regulatory scheme.