John Fund: Obamacare Delay Jeopardizes Immigration Reform

The White House decision to postpone the employer mandate in Obamacare will make it more difficult for Congress to pass immigration reform, insists National Review Online columnist John Fund.

"The Obama administration's instinctive dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law are finally catching up with it," he writes. "Few Republicans in the House — even those who devoutly want immigration reform — trust the Obama administration to enforce with consistency and integrity anything that passes Congress."

Part of that stems from the White House's action on Obamacare. The act requires any company with more than 50 full-time employees to offer health insurance as of 2014 or face a fine. Last week the administration pushed back the start date of that provision to 2015.

"White House aides fretted that enforcing the mandate's timetable would hurt job creation in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections and put Democratic control of the Senate in jeopardy," Fund says.

"The White House could have handled the problem as the Constitution envisioned and opened up negotiations with Congress to change the law. But it quickly concluded that the Republican House would demand too much in exchange for any adjustment to the law."

Fund notes that "the greatest damage from delaying the employer mandate may come in the way it solidifies House Republican doubts about the immigration bill," a view that was confirmed by Tennessee Rep. Phil Roe.

"They have shown no respect for traditional Constitutional separation of powers, and that makes it difficult to pass laws where the fear is that they will simply ignore the parts they don’t like," Roe told Fund.