A regulatory dictatorship?
by. Henry Meier
Today is not a good day for America and it is certainly not a good day for an industry like credit unions, which are dependent on a consistent legal backdrop upon which to grow their businesses and provide needed services to members.
Just so you understand where I am coming from with this, I personally am in favor of universal health care. Over the years, I’ve come to believe that there is something distinctly un-American about people like my wife and I being fortunate enough to get the healthcare we need when we need it while fellow citizens have to choose between paying the rent or taking their kids to the doctor.
But it is becoming increasingly clear that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is driven less by the law than by political considerations. Yesterday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the latest in a growing list of de facto amendments to the law when she announced that individuals with policies that don’t meet the baseline standards of adequate health insurance mandated under the ACA (aka Obamacare) will be able to maintain these policies for an additional two years. What really caught my eye about the announcement was how open the administration was in explaining the political motivation behind the latest amendments. For instance, in announcing these changes, Kathleen Sebelius stated, “[t]hese policies implement the health-care law in a common-sense way by continuing to smooth the transition for consumers and stakeholders and fixing problems wherever the law provides flexibility.” Translation: the law is written so vaguely that the Executive Branch’s election-year definition of common sense trumps any language actually passed by Congress.
It would be bad enough if this approach was being taken with just one law. But in fact it reflects a troubling trend where our elected representatives pick and choose what laws to enforce and write legislation so broadly that legislative responsibilities are being delegated to unelected regulators. Let’s be honest, a Qualified Mortgage is what Director Cordray decides it is. If you think that marijuana possession should be legal even though it is clearly illegal at the federal level, simply pass a state law legalizing it and then lobby the Department of Justice to publicly state what federal laws it doesn’t think are worthy of enforcement.
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