Obamacare Battle Blocks Progress on Other Issues

Even as the health scheme falters, it poisons the policy well

With the administration delaying the insurance exchanges that might help small businesses until 2015, even ObamaCare cheerleaders are growing worried. And the law will leave tens of millions of Americans without health coverage. That's the best-case scenario, the government's own estimates agree.

But ObamaCare doesn't just roil the health care system. It creates major obstacles to tax, entitlement and immigration reform.

As President Obama prepares to release his budget proposal Wednesday, the two parties already are far apart on taxes and spending. And bipartisan efforts to craft a compromise immigration plan, though ongoing in Congress, so far have withered in the public spotlight.

The health law makes bridging the parties' differences on these divisive issues that much harder.