Can someone bring a lawsuit to force the Obama administration to actually stay on schedule for Obamacare?

From the WSJ:

. . . Which brings us to the dubious legality of this delay. The Affordable Care Act's Section 1513 states in black-letter law that "(d) Effective Date.—The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." It does not say the Administration can impose the mandate whenever it feels it is politically convenient. 

This selective enforcement of laws has become an Administration habit. From immigration (the Dream Act by fiat) to easing welfare reform's work requirements to selective waivers for No Child Left Behind, the Obama Administration routinely suspends enforcement of or unilaterally rewrites via regulation the laws it dislikes. Now it is doing it again on health care, without any consultation from, much less the approval of, Congress. President Obama probably figures business and Republicans won't object because they don't like the law anyway. . . .

It is interesting how many reporters are saying that the Obama administration is hoping to get political benefits from pushing off the start of the mandates for companies until after the 2014 elections.




Great, it is nice to know that members of the Obama administration are willing to be so open about their political motives for delaying the damage done by Obamacare until after the next election.


ABC's Rick Klein says that the timing of this comes across as more than coincidental.  He also makes the point about the politics of this change.

Can't someone quickly bring a lawsuit to force the law to be followed.

UPDATE: Even Roll Call has this headline: "Obama Skips Past Congress Again With Health Mandate Delay."

President Barack Obama’s latest legal end run around Congress — delaying enforcement of the employer health mandate — has sparked more questions about whether he’s abusing his executive discretion under the Constitution.
The move announced late Tuesday was the latest in a string of decisions where the president, facing a divided Congress unable to get much done beyond keeping the government running, has taken matters into his own hands.
Where a previous president might have asked for a legislative fix if a mandate was proving too onerous for business, the Obama administration put out a couple of blog posts saying that, in listening to the business community, it decided not to enforce a key part of the 3-year-old health law for another year. . . .
In March, Issa complained in a Washington Examiner op-ed that the Obama administration was interpreting the health care law to provide tax credits in health exchanges even if states refused to set them up — contrary to the law’s text.
The fact that most states refused to set up their own exchanges “does not justify the administration’s effort to ignore the plain language of the law,” Issa wrote.
That dispute is currently the subject of a lawsuit filed by the state of Oklahoma. . . .
Turley cited the president’s decision not to enforce immigration laws with respect to young immigrants as a particularly egregious example — and one that was cheered by top Democrats.
“The president disagreed with Congress on immigration law. His response was to effectively negate the law.  . . .  That rocks our system to the core,” he said. . . .