When the Obama administration, ahem, extralegally delayed the implementation of ObamaCare’s employer mandate — pushing the original deadline for January 2014 back to January 2015 for businesses with 100+ workers, and all the way back to January 2016 for businesses with 50 to 99 workers — they were only delaying the inevitable, and purely for political time bonuses. The rough and costly processes that many businesses are going to have to go through to comply with the law are only just beginning, as the Washington Post mentioned in a report today:

In recent weeks, criticism of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate — one of the law’s most controversial components — has intensified, as employers such as Settles complain publicly and even some Obama administration allies acknowledge that the mandate has harmed some workers.

A number of businesses, including Regal Entertainment and SeaWorld, have reduced hours for part-time workers to fewer than 30 a week — the law’s definition of full time — to avoid having to offer them health insurance. Other companies say they are holding back on hiring to avoid the insurance requirement. Seasonal employees and low-wage workers, such as adjunct professors and cafeteria staffers, have been hit especially hard. …

Many of the employers that have cut part-time hours or taken other actions to limit their costs under the law, such as fast-food restaurants and school districts, have large numbers of seasonal or hourly-wage workers. Traditionally, most of these workers have not received health benefits. And they are often difficult to categorize as part time or full time, because their hours vary.

Reducing hours and holding back on hiring? Sounds like just what the doctor ordered for our recently shrunken economy (which only contracted because of that unseasonably cold winter we had, don’tcha’ know).

The White House has already pretty much Declared Victory on its crowning legislative achievement based on signups in the new independent marketplace that it fashioned in its own ideological image, but ObamaCare’s implementation and the corresponding consequences for the private sector have barely even begun.