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GOP-led House OKs resolution authorizing Speaker John Boehner to sue President Obama
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It would be more sensible and practical to just not fund his humanitarian crisis by design.
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GOP-led House authorizes lawsuit against Obama
By Deirdre Walsh, CNN Senior Congressional Producer
updated 7:19 PM EDT, Wed July 30, 2014
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Obama tells Congress: Stop hatin'
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Republicans pushing suit over Obama executive actions, 5 Republicans vote no
- They say the President is violating the law by circumventing Congress
- Democrats say the suit is just a primer for a Republican-led impeachment of Obama
- Speaker John Boehner says there are no impeachment plans; Democrats raising money off it
(CNN) -- The Republican-led House approved a resolution on Wednesday authorizing Speaker John Boehner to sue President Barack Obama over claims he abused his executive authority at the expense of Congress and the Constitution.
The vote was 225-201.
Republicans argue Obama's executive orders on a number of issues were unlawful because it's the job of Congress to make or change laws. They believe his handling of the Affordable Care act gives them the best chance at proving their case.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/ass...story-body.jpgAn impeachment conspiracy?
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/ass...story-body.jpgBoehner: No GOP plans to impeach Obama
House authorization now allows GOP-leaders to have the unusual challenge filed in federal court. The time frame for that is not clear.
Not a single House Democrat voted for it, and five Republicans opposed it. They were: GOP members Paul Broun of Maryland, Scott Garrett of New Jersey, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Steve Stockman of Texas, and Walter Jones of North Carolina.
The vote takes partisan rancor in Washington to a new level less than four months before congressional midterms. The focus on Obamacare also magnifies politics around the sweeping health law Republicans didn't support and have tried to derail since it's approval in 2010.
Dems claim impeachment coming
Democrats quickly seized to turn the debate on the lawsuit, saying prior to the vote that the real desire of the GOP is to ultimately impeach Obama.
Boehner, who has repeatedly said he disagrees with those pushing impeachment, attempted to shut down that discussion this week.
Insisting that Republicans have "no plans" and "no future plans" to impeach Obama, Boehner denounced the talk about impeachment as "a scam started by Democrats at the White House."
But Democrats seized on polls showing a majority of Americans oppose any effort to remove the President from office, and aren't letting go of the issue.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said the lawsuit was "on a path to nowhere or maybe, among some in your ranks a path to impeachment."
Apparently not satisfied with Boehner's assurance, Pelosi directed this at him: "If you don't want to hear people use the word impeachment as your people have done then tell them impeachment is off the table."
CNN poll on suit, impeachment
Obama tweaks GOP on impeachment
Obama, himself, tweaked Republicans on Wednesday. In Kansas City, Missouri, he noted the House was about to leave Washington for the month of August, but "the main vote that they have scheduled for today is whether or not they decide to sue me for doing my job."
During debate, Democrats lined up on their side of the chamber and one after the other requested that GOP leaders allow votes on measures to raise the minimum wage, extend jobless benefits, and ensure pay equity.
They knew Republicans wouldn't hold off on the lawsuit to take any of those issues up, but the the theater was designed to underscore their argument that the majority party was focused on the lawsuit rather than legislating.
The campaign arm for House Democrats arm has raised $7.6 million from appeals to supporters citing the suit and tied it to the threat of impeachment.
Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, defended the aggressive public push and pledged Democrats would continue it through the midterm election in November.
"You bet we're going to run on a Congress that is just obsessed with lawsuits, suing the President, talking about impeaching him, instead of solutions for the middle class," Israel told CNN.
A CNN/ORC International poll released last week showed those Americans surveyed, by a 57%-41% margin, opposed the lawsuit. Nearly two-thirds said Obama should not be impeached.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/30/politi...uit/index.html
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3 reasons John Boehner opted to sue Obama rather than impeach
While most Republicans favor impeachment, John Boehner recalls the losses that Republicans sustained in 1998 midterm elections, during the Clinton impeachment.
By Francine Kiefer, Staff writer JULY 30, 2014
WASHINGTON — In a near party-line vote, House Republicans on Wednesday approved 225 to 201 a resolution to sue President Obama or other administration officials for actions “inconsistent with their duties under the Constitution.”
Translation: Republicans accuse the president of executive overreach – exceeding his constitutional powers and unlawfully going around Congress.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi calls the lawsuit "perilous and meritless." President Obama dismissed it as a waste of time and taxpayer dollars. "Stop being mad all the time. Stop just hating all the time. Come on," the president said during a speech in Kansas City, Mo., earlier in the day.
Recommended: How much do you know about the US Constitution? A quiz.
Some Republicans, such as former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, want the House to go further and impeach the president. A CNN poll last week shows that the majority of Republicans favor impeachment. So why would House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio opt for a lawsuit instead of impeachment?
Here are three reasons why:
A lawsuit is less disruptive. The 1998 impeachment of President Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice over the Monica Lewinsky scandal plunged Washington into a political crisis, dominated the headlines and kitchen table discussions for months, and cost the nation political stature on the world stage.
No “true conservative” should support impeachment “because that destabilizes the government,” Rep. Peter King (R) of New York told The Huffington Post earlier this month. A lawsuit is the “responsible” thing to do, Rep. Paul Ryan (R) of Wisconsin told reporters at a Monitor breakfast Wednesday.
When Nancy Pelosi (D) of California was speaker of the House, she faced pressure to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush for the war in Iraq. “I did not want to go down that path because of what it would mean for the American people,” she recalled at a press conference earlier this month.
A lawsuit has a better chance of success. Rather than throw a bucketful of complaints at the president – from failure to enforce immigration laws to overreach on greenhouse gas regulations – Republicans have narrowed their focus to the president’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act.
They believe this gives them a better chance of success, although many legal experts argue that the House has no legal standing to sue, because it’s hard to show how it, as an institution, has been harmed by the president’s actions. “The courts usually stay out of this kind of dispute,” wrote Paul Rothstein, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, in an e-mail when the suit was announced in June.
Still, the chance of success at a lawsuit beats the odds of removing the president from office, which is the point of impeachment. Yes, the GOP-controlled house could impeach Mr. Obama, but the Democrat-controlled Senate would never find him guilty or remove him from office. Even a GOP-controlled Senate acquitted Mr. Clinton in 1999, and he stayed in office.
Besides, would Republicans prefer a President Biden to a President Obama? The vice president is next in line should anything happen to the president.
A lawsuit is better politics. The GOP base may favor impeachment, but a majority of Americans do not. Republicans can keep their base happy – and also cool down a boiling tea party – without suffering the political risk associated with impeachment.
Those who were around during Clinton’s impeachment – such as Mr. Boehner – remember that Democrats picked up five House seats in elections that year. That vote went against historic trends in which the sitting president’s party usually loses seats in midterm elections.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Deco...r-than-impeach
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http://news.yahoo.com/taxpayers-dish...210126137.html
Taxpayers Will Dish Out $350,000 for the House to Sue Obama
http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/...ogo_90x60.jpeg By Russell Berman 4 hours ago
How much does it cost to sue the president? Half a grand an hour, or a total of $350,000, if you're the House of Representatives.
The House Committee on Administration announced on Monday that it has retained the law firm BakerHostetler and appointed attorney David Rivkin to lead the House's lawsuit against President Obama, which Republicans approved on a party-line vote last month.
According to a copy of the contract posted on the committee's website, the House (i.e. John Q. Taxpayer) will pay a rate of $500 an hour with a "firm cap" of $350,000 for the lawsuit.
As outlined by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House plans to accuse Obama of exceeding his constitutional authority by delaying the employer mandate in his healthcare law without permission from Congress.
Rivkin had argued that House Republicans had a case against Obama, andG.O.P. leaders relied on his legal theory in deciding to pursue a largely unprecedented lawsuit.
RELATED: The White House Doesn't Want to Talk About Airstrikes in Syria. Yet.
The chairwoman of the Administration Committee, Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), said in a statement accompanying the release of the contract that the lawsuit was about holding the president "accountable."
No president is above nor should operate beyond the limits of the Constitution. The House of Representatives, using regular order and the powers that the Constitution has provided, calls upon our government’s system of checks and balances and asks the judicial branch to examine the president’s failure to faithfully execute the law. The president must be held accountable, and the House will continue to act in an open and transparent manner to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
Democrats weren't buying it, and the chairman of the party's campaign committee, Rep. Steve Israel (N.Y.), released a statement calling the contract an "outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars."This outrageous waste of taxpayer dollars is yet another reminder of House Republicans’ misguided priorities. Only in John Boehner’s world does it make sense to pay lawyers $500 per hour to work on a partisan lawsuit while refusing to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 for hardworking Americans trying to feed their families."
Check out the contract below. After all, you're paying for it.
House Lawsuit Contract
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014...-obama/379106/
