Conservative columnist George Will on Sunday suggested that President Barack Obama had caused a "constitutional scandal" by giving states the option of letting insurance companies continue to sell junk insurance plans for one year -- and he said that meant a future Republican president would be able to stop enforcing tax laws on wealthy Americans.

During a panel segment on Fox News Sunday, Will quoted a Republican congressman who said that the president "is like a man who burns your house down, then shows up with an empty water bottle and then delivers a lecture on how bad your house was before he burned it down."

"It looks to a great many of us to be illegal," he added, referring to the so "fix" that will give insurance regulators the leeway of allowing low-quality insurance plans to continue for additional year. "What we're told in grade school when we study civics is in that building behind you are the two legislative chambers of the federal government, the Senate and the House. It turns out, there's a third. It's called the White House press room, into which the president can, on a whim, sashay and rewrite laws."

"I do think this is a constitutional scandal," Will said. "Suppose the next Republican president -- and there will be another Republican president -- comes into the press room sometime and says, 'You know, I really think the capital gains tax does not serve the national interest so we're just, as an act of executive discretion, going to quit enforcing that for a few years. That's not the rule of law."