President Barack Obama says he’s giving mid-size businesses more time to comply with his health care law because the goal is not to punish anyone — unless, it seems, the goal is to thwart political opposition.

Obama’s assurance is small comfort to businesses striving to hit the moving targets of his administration’s cumbersome health care overhaul. The businesses and their employees certainly don’t deserve punishment since they have committed no punishable offense.

The Obama administration on Monday delayed for a second time the mandate for medium-to-larger firms to provide health care for their workers or face fines. The administration said companies with 50 to 99 employees will have an additional year to comply with the coverage requirement, until Jan. 1, 2016.

For those keeping count, this was the 10th delay for ObamaCare in a year; the first, on Feb. 13, 2013, was a one-year delay for state governments to implement a basic health care plan for low-income adults who don’t qualify for Medicaid. Some of the nine delays since then have been labeled grace periods and deadline extensions. There have been several other changes, clarifications and exemptions made unilaterally by the administration, each over the energetic opposition of congressional Republicans.

This latest delay pushes the deadline for business insurance plans well beyond the midterm congressional elections in November.

Republicans, who are trying to win control of the Senate in November, have made ObamaCare their top issue. They criticize it as a job-killing burden on businesses and individuals. Republican leaders argue — with some justice — that the changes indicate the health care reform package is unmanageable, an overreach and a burden, and at the least not ready for prime time.

Given the rudiments of this conflict, it would seem the delay announced Monday plays into the hand of Republicans, except for one detail; by pushing the deadline far beyond the midterm elections, Obama removes the immediacy of the issue for small businesses, who now can put compliance on the back burner — where Democrats would prefer to keep it until after the election.

Republicans are livid over the delays and exemptions which, in a convoluted sense, turn threats of punishment into a reprieve, or a pardon. As Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Rebublican minority leader says, “The White House seems to have a new exemption from its failed law for a different group each month.”

Meanwhile, the Republicans contend, most Americans still have to get health coverage this year or pay a fine, a source of political headaches as people struggled to sign up for coverage during early website glitches. Many still have to decide whether it’s better for them to sign up for coverage or pay the fine.

Republicans are pushing a principle of fairness: If businesses can get a break, why can’t individuals? “It’s time we give every American the same relief from the law that the president has granted to businesses by working toward a legislative solution to delay ObamaCare for everyone,” said House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy.

The president pushed his landmark Affordable Care Act through congressional approval: now he should let it be implemented, as is, and follow legislative procedure with any amendments wending through Congress.

Any more delays will erode what’s left of the administration’s integrity — but not as rapidly as a continued course of unilateral changes and delays.