Posted on 07/12/2014 7:20:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Are we the only ones who are amazed at the nerve of House Speaker John A. Boehner?
For the past few weeks, the Republican from Ohio has been promising to file a lawsuit against Pres. Barack Obama for the manner in which he has issued executive orders, which his party believes is unconstitutional.
"The current president believes he has the power to make his own laws -- at times even boasting about it," Boehner said in his statement.
What's most audacious about Boehner's threatened lawsuit is that it will focus on the Affordable Care Act and Obama's executive order delaying implementation of a portion of the act that imposes penalties on employers who do not offer health insurance to employees.
"He has said that if Congress won't make the laws he wants, he'll go ahead and make them himself, and in the case of the employer mandate in his health care law, that's exactly what he did."
Need we remind our voters that the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2009 with only one Republican vote? And that since then, the House has voted, unsuccessfully mind you, 54 times to repeal ACA?
Would it be disingenuous of us to point out the irony -- no, the hypocrisy -- of Boehner's attempt to sue over implementation of a portion of legislation only a blue-state Republican voted for?
Besides the obvious political machinations that have gone into Boehner's deliberations, he says it's about limiting the power of future presidents.
"If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well," Boehner said. "The House has an obligation to stand up for the legislative branch, and the Constitution, and that is exactly what we will do."
We would just ask that Boehner stand up for the average American the same way he believes he is standing up for the legislative branch and the Constitution.
In an amazing display of sarcasm -- which we wish the president had been employing more liberally over the past six years -- Obama berated Boehner for his threats.
"Now, I don't know which things they find most offensive -- me helping to create jobs, or me raising wages, or me easing the student loan burdens, or me making sure women can find out whether they're getting paid the same as men for doing the same job. I don't know which of these actions really bug them."
As Obama noted, he is on track to issue the fewest number of executive orders in the past 100 years.
"So it's not clear how it is that Republicans didn't seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did. Maybe it's just me they don't like. I don't know. Maybe there's some principle out there that I haven't discerned, that I haven't figure out. You hear some of them -- ‘sue him,' ‘impeach him.' Really? Really? For what? You're going to sue me for doing my job? OK."
As he noted: "You're going to use taxpayer money to sue me for doing my job -- while you don't do your job. So rather than wage another political stunt that wastes time, wastes taxpayers' money, I've got a better idea: Do something. If you're mad at me for helping people on my own, let's team up. Let's pass some bills. Let's help America together."
Ed O'Keefe, writing for the Washington Post, notes the lawsuit might just be Boehner's attempt to defuse GOP calls for the impeachment of Obama.
Among the apparently reality-challenged advocates for impeachment are former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin (who recently likened the president to a wife beater) and Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Reps. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.), Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.), Michael Burgess (R-Tex.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), former congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) and Allen West (R-Fla.), and the South Dakota Republican Party.
We wonder if Boehner is attempting to throw a bone of distraction to the maniacally salivating members of his party or if he is attempting to use the courts to score political points in advance of the 2014 elections.
The attorneys advising the GOP to pursue the lawsuit -- David Rivkin and Elizabeth Price Foley, who were both involved in the GOP's failed attempt to overturn the health care law -- insist it has merit.
"Professor Foley and I believe that there are numerous instances where President Obama has not only suspended portions of congressional statutes, but has also replaced the relevant statutory language with a new language that was drafted solely by the executive branch," Rivkin told Wallbank. "This blatant usurpation of legislative authority by the president is the most palpable injury to the House of Representatives as an institution and would amply satisfy the constitutional requirement of an injury-in-fact, necessary to establish standing," Rivkin told Wallbank.
And legal scholar Jonathan Turley told MSNBC they might have a plausible case against the president.
"There's no license for going it alone in our system, and what he's done is very problematic. He has shifted $454 million of the ACA from appropriated purpose to another purpose. He's told agencies not to enforce some laws, like immigration laws. He has effectively rewritten laws through the active interpretation that I find very problematic. While I happen to agree with him, I voted for him, I think this is a problem."
Ron Christie, a Republican political strategist and a former member of Dick Cheney's vice presidential staff, writing for the Daily Beast, insists Boehner could be successful.
"The real issue, of course, is not the number of executive orders issued during one's presidency but rather their legality. And it's here that Boehner and company have a real, substantive case against the president."
Christie notes that Obama has issued "at least 32 legislative fixes to the Affordable Care Act, softened laws against illegal immigration, and stripped the work requirement from President Clinton's welfare reform -- all with the stroke of his pen."
Whether or not Boehner's threat has legal merit, Derek Wallbank, writing for Bloomberg, notes Boehner's lawsuit stands a very good chance of backfiring with voters. He reminds his readers that only 7 percent of Americans expressed confidence in Congress in a June Gallup poll, a historic low for the institution.
"Legal scholars say Republicans will have to clear a high hurdle to get the judiciary to rule on whether the executive branch abused its authority," notes Wallbank.
And Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University, told Dean Obeidallah, writing for the Daily Beast, that "every U.S. president is given great discretion when implementing laws that Congress has passed, and Obama has not acted differently in that capacity from any president since the New Deal."
So far, Obama has issued 182 executive orders. Bush issued 291, Bill Clinton signed 364 and Ronald Reagan, 381.
"I wonder, if Boehner had been House Speaker in the 1980s, if he would have sued Ronald Reagan, who issued more than double the number of executive orders as Obama's 182, coming in at 381?" asked Obeidallah, who has a suggestion for the president.
"If Boehner files this lawsuit, I can only hope that Obama files a bunch of counterclaims. ... And Obama should definitely sue Boehner to reimburse us for the costs associated with the 54 times the GOP-controlled House has voted to repeal Obamacare. Per CBS's 2013 calculations, those meaningless votes cost $52.4 million in taxpayer's dollars."
Like everything the GOP and its far-right acolytes have thrown in the vicinity of the president -- including the slurs, the subtle (and not so subtle) racist epithets, the issue over his birth certificate and questions about his religion, his perceived "weakness" about his foreign policy, Benghazi ... etc., ad nauseum -- Boehner's latest attempt to undermine the president is just another example of the moral bankruptcy of the self-proclaimed arbiters of morality. Rather than attempt to work with this president, the Republicans have kowtowed to their base and their monied puppet masters, all in a craven attempt to hold on to the power that is slowly slipping through their fingers, and not just because of demographic change but also because rationality eventually triumphs over lunacy.
Perhaps, one day, the GOP will return to its legacy as the party of Lincoln, but this latest tactic by Boehner signals that may never happen.
This comes from Brattleboro, the town that took months to decide whether or not it was offended by its teenagers walking around naked downtown. When the country splits up, the other side can keep Brattleboro.
Hey Brats! You want to see lunacy? Look at what your boy has going on down on the southern border. That’s lunacy!
Realistically, impeachment cannot succeed with harry Reid in the Senate.
What other manner of action is available to thwart this President’s actions?
Silence is consent. Until and unless Obama can be stopped someway, his actions will become president.
At least, Boehner has the vision to recognize that the Obama administration is engaged in lawlessness, which seems to have escaped the Reformer's notice.
Impeachment is from the House, which is now
complicit with the TREASON.
I don’t understand this logic, so if 1% republican was for it, but 99% was against it, its hypocritical for the 99% republican to oppose it? Thats not how hypocrisy work
The lawsuit is a waste of time, its just Boehner pushing his responsibility to someone else. He has the power to stop it, but he won’t to avoid bad press
Plus that’s B.S. No Republicans voted for the ACA.
Seems like Congress has very little to lose here. Might as well go for broke.
Left-wing rant.
Never the less, Boehner is a coward, too afraid to pull the lever on Impeachment, so he brings up this useless grand-standing lawsuit that will accomplish absolutely nothing.
More empty PR gestures meant to fool those who aren’t paying close attention.
Why don’t the so called republican leaders just use a little Sarah Palin speak and tell BOzo...” sorry you token J*rk off, your outta here!”
Shouldn’t causing the US to incur a 3.7 Billion Dollar debt as a direct result of his encouraging non-US citizens to break US laws be reason enough to IMPEACH this person? How much more can this country take? It’s a death by a thousand cuts for this Nation.
Boehner is worried about stopping future presidents from breaking the law, I am worried about this guy doing the same thing...
It’s not the number of Executive Orders, it’s the overreaching. XO’s have their place and purpose.
Defend Boehner?
LMAO...
These people are pure grade A idiots, but Boehner has done some much to breed contempt for himself, that I’ll just sit back and hit the snooze alarm here.
... and ...
"There is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders. The term "executive power" Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution, refers to the title of President as the executive. He is instructed therein by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5, else he faces impeachment. Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties, the intent being to help direct officers of the U.S. Executive carry out their delegated duties as well as the normal operations of the federal government: the consequence of failing to comply possibly being the removal from office.
"An executive order of the President must find support in the Constitution, either in a clause granting the President specific power, or by a delegation of power by Congress to the President."
I don't think Mr. Obey Dallah has the foggiest notion as to what he is talking about. What would be the counterclaims? The fact is that courts have in the past denied standing to one or a few members of Congress filing a lawsuit. It will be harder to deny standing to an entire chamber, one with specific powers granted to it. Let's see what happens.
Mr. Obeidallah, by the way, is a Palestinian.
A denser forest of libtard insanity one could never find. Nice folks but they have drank deeply from the tree of liberal evil.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.