Friday, September 27, 2013

Trouble in Paradise: Democrat Senator Supports Delay of Individual Mandate

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke ranks with fellow Democrats and said he’d support a stopgap spending plan that delays the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.” [...]

“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right now,” Manchin said. “Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”

Manchin's defection will put pressure on other red state Senate Democrats to agree to a compromise delaying the individual mandate. According to a paper by the liberal-leaning Urban Institute, a one-year delay of the individual mandate could "seriously disrupt" the entire law.

Link to full story at the Weekly Standard quoting Bloomberg.