One of the major reasons that Obamacare has gotten off to such a miserable start is that rules that should have been written years ago were delayed until after the 2012 election to avoid controversy.

Other rules affecting the environment and worker safety were also delayed for political reasons. That's the conclusion reached by the Washington Post, who interviewed several former administration officials who confirmed the political nature of the delays.

The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Some agency officials were instructed to hold off submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to ensure that they would not be issued before voters went to the polls, the current and former officials said.

The delays meant that rules were postponed or never issued. The stalled regulations included crucial elements of the Affordable Care Act, what bodies of water deserved federal protection, pollution controls for industrial boilers and limits on dangerous silica exposure in the workplace.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and that such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials told The Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama's top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his reelection.

The number and scope of delays under Obama went well beyond those of his predecessors, who helped shape rules but did not have the same formalized controls, said current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Those findings are bolstered by a new report from the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent agency that advises the federal government on regulatory issues. The report is based on anonymous interviews with more than a dozen senior agency officials who worked with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which oversees the implementation of federal rules.

This is part of the answer to the question what were these guys doing for 3 years prior to Obamacare's rollout? By delaying crucial rules, they prevented action on many elements of Obamacare that were necessary to construct the website. For example, because rules involving the coverage mandates were delayed until December 2012, insurers had to scramble to design policies. It wasn't until spring that the policies were ready for review by state insurance commissions, which meant all that information had to be squeezed into the websites in a short period of time.

When the entire government is put into service to re-elect the president, bad things are bound to happen.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky