House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Thursday revealed that he plans to sue President Barack Obama for his unilateral delay of the Obamacare employer mandate, ratcheting up the tension between the White House and Republicans over the limits of executive authority.
The Speaker unveiled a two-page bill that he plans to advance through the House, declaring a right of action to sue the president for exceeding his authority.
“Today we’re releasing a draft resolution that will authorize the House to file suit over the way President Obama unilaterally changed the employer mandate,” Boehner said in a statement. “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.”
Last year the president announced he’ll delay by one year the Obamacare requirement that businesses with 50 or more employees provide insurance to their employees. Republicans strongly objected to the mandate in the first place and have called for repealing it.
Boehner announced three weeks ago he plans to advance legislation authorizing a House lawsuit against the president for overreach, but he hadn’t revealed what executive action he’ll challenge until Thursday.
House Republicans plan on advancing the proposal in the Rules Committee next Wednesday, July 16.
David Schnittger, Boehner’s deputy chief of staff, said on Twitter that the legislation was “[d]raft language” and “not necessarily final.”
Obama has mocked and dismissed Boehner’s plan to sue him as a gimmick, saying he’s only doing his job because Congress is gridlocked.
“Republicans are wasting taxpayer dollars on another toxic partisan stunt,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement. “This lawsuit is just another distraction from House Republicans desperate to distract the American people from their own spectacular obstruction and dysfunction.”
I am beginning to get the impression that John Boehner is literally grasping at straws --ANYTHING – to make it appear that he is doing something and actually being useful. Ego-maniac to the max!
Finally. They have released the details of this lawsuit and now they can move on with working on the Supplement for the Border crisis.
THIS is the best they got???
This is an “Onion” story isn’t it?
So you’re gonna sue the President for not inconveniencing employers?
Good luck with that, Rep. Boner (R - Loompaland)!