Tom Rice: “Back last summer when the President unilaterally announced that he was going to not enforce the employer mandate under…”

“Back last summer when the President unilaterally announced that he was going to not enforce the employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act, I was quite surprised because the next day there was a news article in The New York Times about it. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin was quoted in the article. He was one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act. He said, speaking of the President: This was the law. How can he do that? How can the President simply unilaterally choose to ignore the law? Our Founders, Mr. Speaker, designed a system of government based upon a separation of powers. The legislative branch enacts the laws and the executive branch, the President, enforces those laws. They did that to protect our very, very fragile freedom. We cannot allow those separations to be eroded. One man who can both make the laws and enforce the laws is more a monarch than a President. Article II, section 3 of the Constitution requires, in part, that the President take care to faithfully execute the Nation's laws. In 1792, when George Washington was faced with enforcing an unpopular whiskey tax, he wrote in a letter that: It is my duty to see that these laws are executed. To permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be repugnant to that duty. President Obama, on the other hand, has, throughout his administration, picked and chosen which laws or parts thereof he wishes to enforce.…”