It just keeps getting more and more Orwellian:
Some lawmakers, though, have claimed that the mere threat of the employer mandate is causing companies to shed full-time workers in the hope of keeping their staff size below 50 and avoiding the requirement.
Administration officials dispute that this is happening on any large scale. Further, Treasury officials said Monday that businesses will be told to “certify” that they are not shedding full-time workers simply to avoid the mandate. Officials said employers will be told to sign a “self-attestation” on their tax forms affirming this, under penalty of perjury. [emphasis added]
This comes via Ed Morrissey who adds:
Er … exactly what gives Treasury the authority to demand that kind of pledge, anyway? The law only mandates that employers provide coverage for full-time employees, a status defined by working 30 or more hours a week. It doesn’t contain any authority for Treasury or anyone else to force current full-time employees to stay in that status, nor for the federal government to dictate ratios of full-time/part-time staff.
“Statutory authority” seems a rather antiquated notion in an age where 95% can be transmuted into 70% and 2013 can be delayed until 2014 which can be delayed until 2015, all by executive fiat.
In the end however, statutory authority comes from Congress — and ours has very little interest in exercising any.
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