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New York Times
Seeing Opening,
House G.O.P. Pushes Delay on Individual Mandate in Health Law
By Jonathan Weisman and Robert Pear
July 9, 2013
WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders on Tuesday seized on the Obama
administration’s one-year delay of a mandate for larger employers to
offer health insurance or face penalties, demanding the same
postponement for the mandate on individual insurance purchases and
promising a series of showdowns aimed at dividing Democrats from the
White House.
Republicans believe they are getting traction thanks to what they see
as the Obama administration’s self-inflicted wound over the employer
mandate.
House leaders began devising strategies that would most likely start
this month with multiple votes, the first to codify the one-year delay
on the employer mandate, then another to demand a delay on the
individual mandate. They calculate that Democrats would first vote to
back the administration’s decision, and would then have a hard time
opposing the second measure. Some Republicans raised the possibility
that a provision to repeal the individual mandate could be attached
this fall to legislation raising the government’s statutory borrowing
limit.
“Is it fair for the president of the United States to give American
businesses an exemption from his health care law’s mandates without
giving the same exemption to the rest of America? Hell no, it’s not
fair,” Speaker John A. Boehner told a closed-door gathering of House
Republicans on Tuesday, according to those present.
Some Democrats were also dismayed by the White House’s actions. Senator
Tom Harkin of Iowa, the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor
and Pensions Committee and an author of the health law, questioned
whether Mr. Obama had the authority to unilaterally delay the employer
mandate.
“This was the law. How can they change the law?” he asked.
For its part, the White House continued to look flat-footed on the
issue. After an almost surreptitious evening announcement of the delay
last week, posted on the Treasury Department’s Web site, the White
House is declining to send a representative to a House hearing on the
decision that is scheduled for Wednesday. An administration official
might testify next week…
Read the rest of the article at the New York Times
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