House Speaker John Boehner's lawsuit against President Barack Obama will focus on Obama's 2013 decision to unilaterally delay implementation of the so-called employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act. THE VERY THING THAT THE GOP WANTED OBAMA TO DO!
The mandate's "burden" on employers had been the focus of much GOP effort and they had called on him to delay implementation. AND THEN HE DID. Damn him! So now they are trying their old trick- strike at something at the heart of ACA.
Note: The House has refused to consider any fixes to the law- something this is done in every piece of major legislation. It was repeal the whole thing or nothing. Obama did a work around.....
Was Obama withing his authority to make this decision without Congress? Constitutional scholar Simon Lazarus argued that such concerns about the legality of the administration's decisions were overblown and ahistorical:"In fact, applicable judicial precedent places such timing adjustments well within the Executive Branch's lawful discretion... Nor is the one-year delay of the employer mandate an affront to the Constitution, as Professor Michael McConnell and Congressional Republicans insist... Rather, the President has authorized a minor temporary course correction regarding individual ACA provisions, necessary in his Administration's judgment to faithfully execute the overall statute, other related laws, and the purposes of the ACA's framers. As a legal as well as a practical matter, that's well within his job description."
http://www.theatlantic.com/...
Boehner's office released a draft document on Thursday of the resolution set to be filed in the House of Representatives, which would authorize the chamber to take legal action against the president. The decision to use the ACA as the fulcrum for their suit is likely undertood by them as the best change of being recognized as having "standing" in court to bring such a suit.
The House Rules Committee will take it up next week.
Boehner's press release says: "In 2013, the president changed the health care law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work. No president should have the power to make laws on his or her own."
He wrote in a CNN.com op-ed on Sunday that the House could target a number of specific executive actions as fodder for its lawsuit, including Obama's actions with regard to the Affordable Care Act, energy regulations, foreign policy, and education.
The White House and the president himself have jokingly dismissed the lawsuit. Most notably, Obama taunted House Republicans during a speech last week in which he pressed them to find a solution to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. This week Obama has laid down the need to act on immigration, on unemployment funding, on the minimum wage and a dozen other initiatives stalled in the House (when many would pass in an open floor vote).
"I told him, I’d rather do things with you, pass some laws, make sure the Highway Trust Fund is funded so we don’t lay off hundreds of thousands of workers. It’s not that hard. Middle-class families can’t wait for Republicans in Congress to do stuff. So sue me. As long as they’re doing nothing, I’m not going to apologize for trying to do something." Obama said of Boehner.