One executive order cancels another

During the Obama years, we warned Democrats that they would regret the day a GOP president sat in the White House.  I remember telling a friend that the next GOP president could play this executive order game just as well.  I followed by saying President Obama should request all of those changes to Obamacare, or even DACA, from Congress so that they would be the law of the land, not up to the discretion of the executive.

Maybe the Democrats believed their "demographics" theories too much and thought it would be impossible for a GOP candidate to win 270 votes.  Perhaps they were all too busy buying their outfits for Mrs. Clinton's historic inauguration.

No matter what, the future is here, and President Trump is one by one by scratching those Obama executive orders.

At this pace, President Obama's résumé will be a total blank under "accomplishments."  It will simply say he was inaugurated in 2009, was re-elected in 2012 and left office in 2017.  There will be very little in between because he did so much by executive order rather than laws passed by Congress.  "The 'Blank' Presidency" may be the title of a future book about this time in office.

President Trump used his pen to delete the things President Obama added to the law without consulting Congress, as Betsy McCaughey, the author of Beating ObamaCare, explained:

Trump has now seized the initiative, after congressional Republicans fell flat on their faces and failed to address the pain ObamaCare is inflicting on consumers stuck in the individual insurance market.

The president should keep going. What's next? Trump should use his discretion to stop enforcing the tax penalty on those who don't buy ObamaCare-compliant plans, including buyers of short-term plans.

Then he should cancel the sweetheart deal his predecessor weaseled for members of Congress and their staff members. Even though the Affordable Care Act requires them to buy coverage on ObamaCare exchanges, Obama arranged for them to have a choice of 57 gold plans and have John Q. Public pick up most of their costs. It's an outrage.

Once members of Congress are feeling the same pain as everyone else, they'll be more focused on repealing and replacing the dysfunctional health law. In the meantime, Trump is wisely providing relief where it counts the most – in people's wallets.

Yes, Trump has seized the initiative because so much of the law's burdens were imposed by executive order, from the contraceptive ruling to the subsidies to insurance companies.

President Trump's moves will not fix the problem until Obamacare is totally repealed.  However, it is a lesson to all: govern by executive order, and the next guy will do the same thing and delete your executive orders!

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