“An Old Lie Makes A Shameful Comeback”: John Boehner Owes The Public An Explanation For How He Can Be So Uninformed
USA Today ran an editorial today on House Republicans’ anti-Obama lawsuit, and the paper was clearly unimpressed, calling it a “political sideshow.” As the paper always does, it then ran a companion opinion piece making the opposite case. Defending the litigation was, of course, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).
The basic pitch was copy-and-paste boilerplate, but it included something specific that’s worth additional attention.
I believe the president’s actions in a number of areas – including job-destroying energy regulations, releasing the “Taliban 5” from Guantanamo without notice and waiving the work requirements in welfare – exceed his constitutional authority.
Remember, Boehner – or whoever writes these unpersuasive missives for the Speaker – could have picked any examples he wanted to bolster the case. If Obama “exceeds his constitutional authority” all of the time, as congressional Republicans claim, Boehner and his office presumably have a lengthy list to choose from.
And what did the Speaker come up with? Climate regulations, in a rather literal sense, can’t be an example of the president “exceeding his constitutional authority” – using the Clean Air Act to address the climate crisis has already been authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court. A prisoner swap to free an American POW is also a bizarre example, since prisoner swaps do not require congressional or judicial approval. In other words, Boehner’s 0 for 2.
And then there’s the claim that President Obama “waived the work requirement in welfare.” This is a lie, and if Boehner doesn’t know that, the Speaker owes the public an explanation for how he can be so uninformed.
We last covered this in March, when former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) alluded to the same falsehood, but in case anyone’s forgotten, let’s quickly review reality.
In the president’s first term, a bipartisan group of governors asked the Obama administration for some flexibility on the existing welfare law, transitioning beneficiaries from welfare to work. The White House agreed to give the states some leeway – so long as the work requirement wasn’t weakened.
That’s not “waiving the work requirements in welfare”; that’s the opposite. Providing governors, including several Republicans, the flexibility they requested to help move beneficiaries back into the workforce is exactly the sort of power-to-the-states policy that Boehner and his cohorts usually like.
But in 2012, the policy inspired Mitt Romney and GOP leaders to turn this into a rather shameless lie, accusing Obama of weakening welfare work requirements. The more fact-checkers went berserk, the more aggressive Romney became in pushing the lie. One can only speculate as to the rationale behind the ugly falsehood, though the Republican presidential campaign seemed quite eager at the time to use the words “Obama” and “welfare” in the same sentence, even after the GOP candidate and his team realized they were lying.
Two years later, Boehner is echoing the racially charged falsehood for no reason. If the Speaker is struggling to defend his frivolous lawsuit, that’s unfortunate, but it’s no excuse to repeat a shameful lie.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 28, 2014
“Republicans Are Gonna Be Really Mad!”: Boehner Sues Obama In Order To Implement Health Law Faster
When I learned that House Speaker John Boehner is suing President Barack Obama, I thought about a number of good reasons for something to limit executive actions. Would it be to limit NSA spying on its citizens? Could it have something to do with limiting IRS hazing of liberal and conservative groups (the Tea Party gets most of the attention, but the Congressional panel revealed that all new groups got special scrutiny)?
Would it end executive orders by the executive branch, or terminate signing statements, something done by Obama and George W. Bush (who did both with more frequency)? Might it require less immunity for advisers in the presidential administration?
Actually, it wouldn’t involve any of these good reasons for a lawsuit.
Instead, House Speaker Boehner wants to sue President Obama to implement the health care law, known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), sooner.
Huh?
That’s right, Boehner claims that the Obama administration overstepped its legal bounds by delaying the employer mandate for a year. Businesses won’t be mandated to provide health care for their employees for a year.
What’s ironic is that House Republicans, when they weren’t voting to repeal the ACA, they also tried to vote for the exact same delay in the employer mandate.
So the lawsuit clearly isn’t about policy. It is about who has the power.
Boehner claims that the Obama administration shouldn’t have the power to write the law. But isn’t the executive branch allowed to implement the law? Is the timing part of writing a law, or implementing a law?
Actually, there’s a long history of delays in implementing the law, even about health care. And I don’t remember Boehner filing a lawsuit, or even objecting, when President George W. Bush delayed the implementation of his prescription drug law 10 years ago (passed by Congress, of course).
Boehner also claims that the White House has been abusing the executive actions, even though Obama has used the fewest executive actions since Grover Cleveland, according to the Washington Post. Granted, Boehner admitted that he thinks presidents should be allowed to use executive orders, but that the president has been abusing such authority with recess appointments.
If that term sounds familiar, it’s something President George W. Bush would use when making appointments that weren’t approved by Congress. Nobody remembers Boehner suing Bush over these, or even objecting to them.
When making his case for the lawsuit in his op-ed in a CNN article, Boehner didn’t say anything about implementing the health care law sooner, or even that he supported some recess appointments made by Obama’s predecessor. Instead, he cited Senate Democrats and President Obama refusing to pass House Republican jobs bills.
I don’t remember that being unconstitutional.
When Republican voters realize that the lawsuit has nothing to do with illegal immigration, the IRS, the NSA and spying, or repealing the health care law, but making the mandates occur faster, how will they react? I foresee a lot of disappointment in GOP ranks when they read the lawsuit.
By: John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga: The Huffington Post Blog, July 27, 2014
“It’s Funny How That Happens”: GOP Discovers The Virtue Of Unilateral Presidential Action
With less than a week before Congress leaves town for a month-long break, legislative prospects appear bleak. President Obama called weeks ago for action on the border crisis, but there’s now very little hope that lawmakers will get anything done.
Yesterday, as msnbc’s Jane Timm reported, House Speaker John Boehner gave the White House an ultimatum: accept changes to the Bush/Cheney-era human-trafficking law that allows immigrants from non-contiguous countries to seek asylum in the U.S., or House Republicans will refuse to pass a bill.
It’s reached the point at which the same GOP lawmakers who’ve condemned the president for trying to work around Congress are now urging the president to circumvent Congress.
Even as Congress jousts over a legislative response to the influx of child migrants from Central America, [a group of Texas Republican lawmakers] contend the president can take unilateral steps to end the crisis immediately. “You have the authority to stop the surge of illegal entries by immigrant minors today,” the Republicans wrote Thursday in a letter to Obama. […]
The recommendations include empowering local law enforcement agencies to prosecute federal immigration laws; cracking down on immigration fraud; speeding up deportations of the new arrivals; and ending the administration’s deferred action program, which allows some illegal immigrants brought to the country as children to remain and work without fear of deportation.
Apparently, some GOP lawmakers believe unilateral White House actions are evidence of a tyrannical dictatorship, unless Obama is acting unilaterally on an issue they care about, in which case they’re all for executive authority.
It’s funny how that happens.
There is, however, a related question that’s gone largely overlooked lately: if House Republicans support a far-right proposal that deploys the National Guard and changes the 2008 human-trafficking law, why don’t they just pass one? After all, the GOP is in the majority in the House and if they want to approve a conservative plan, they can, right?
Well, it’s not quite that simple. In theory, sure, House Republicans can pass anything they please, but in this case, that’s not possible. As Greg Sargent reported this week, far-right lawmakers are pushing to make sure the House approves literally nothing on this issue, in part because they don’t want to address the problem at all and in part because if the lower chamber does pass a bill, it might lead to a compromise with the Senate,
And as we know, Republicans really won’t tolerate compromises.
It’s led to a bizarre scenario: Boehner is whining that Obama isn’t doing enough to push House Democrats to support a Republican bill. Indeed, if House Republicans do absolutely nothing, after complaining for months about the need for action, the Speaker will say it’s the president’s fault for not telling Dems to vote the way Republicans want them to.
No, seriously, that’s the argument. Boehner once again can’t round up Republican votes for a Republican bill, so he’s convinced himself that Obama’s to blame.
It’s also why the very same GOP officials who claim to hate unilateral presidential action have suddenly discovered the virtues of Obama making policy moves irrespective of Congress.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 25, 2014
“Fat Chance!”: Chris Christie Admits He Ignored The Law To Help Tesla. Do Republicans Want To Sue Him, Too?
After initially threatening to sue President Barack Obama over a variety of issues, House Speaker John Boehner settled on just one: the delay of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate. The legality of that action, as law school professor Nicholas Bagley has pointed out, is questionable. But the lawsuit also implies that the executive branch should have limited discretion in implementing laws. And Republicans only have to look toward Governor Chris Christie to show how that doesn’t make much sense.
In 2013, Obama delayed for a year the employer mandate, which requires all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide health insurance to their employees or pay a penalty. Infuriated, Republicans called the president’s unilateral action illegal. On this count, they may be right. But it will be nearly impossible for Boehner to convince the courts that the House has suffered concrete damage that gives them the constitutional authority to challenge the action. In all likelihood, the lawsuit is meaningless.
However, this case has implications beyond its legal importance. Simon Lazarus, the senior counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, testified on Wednesday before the House Rules Committee about the historic discretion afforded presidents to implement laws.
“The Administration has not postponed the employer mandate out of policy opposition to the ACA, nor to any specific provision of it,” he said, according to his prepared remarks. “It is ludicrous to suggest otherwise, and at best misleading to characterize the action as a ‘refusal to enforce’ at all. 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.” The key is that Obama delayed the employer mandate in order to prioritize the success of the entire law. It does not fundamentally change the legislation or attempt to undermine it.
Lazarus also gave examples when former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton used their discretion in implementing legislation. Bush, for instance, delayed certain EPA regulations not out of technical need, but because he opposed the policies. That is a much graver offense than delaying part of the law in order to increase the chances of its success. The Bush administration actively tried to undermine it. “Such intentional refusals to enforce or implement laws … do violate the laws in question, and are, by definition, failures to faithfully execute the laws as required by the Constitution,” Lazarus said.
Christie used discretion similarly in a decision regarding Tesla’s ability to sell directly to its customers. Under New Jersey statute, direct sales of automobiles are illegal. Christie opposes that law, but must enforce it—except, as he told CNBC’s John Harwood Wednesday, he gave Tesla a one-year grace period.
“The fact is we looked the other way for a year, to allow Tesla to do what they are doing,” he said. “I can’t just pick and choose the laws to enforce. So I give [sic] them what I felt was a reasonable period of time to operate the way they were operating.”
After a year, Christie believed that he had to enforce the law—and Republicans around the country freaked out. A.J. Delgado, of the National Review, questioned Christie’s commitment to the free market. “[Y]ou’d expect Christie, who claims to believe in free markets, to recognize a protectionist swindle, as he did when he took on the state’s powerful public-school teacher unions,” he wrote.
Legally, Christie’s selective enforcement on the ban on direct automobile sales might be more justifiable than Obama’s delay of the employer mandate. Executives frequently prioritize certain laws based on their limited resources. Obama defied a specific deadline in the law. But the functional implications of them are the same. Christie and Obama both used their discretion in enforcing laws to improve their administration’s governance. For Obama, that meant delaying the employer mandate to ease the implementation of Obamacare. For Christie, it meant giving Tesla a year-long reprieve from the direct-sales ban to give the legislature time to change the law.
That’s not to say that executives should have unlimited authority to adjust legislation. But they should be able to use discretion in implementing laws so that they have the greatest chance of success. The House’s lawsuit threatens to eliminate that discretion.
By: Danny Vinik, The New Republic, July 17, 2014
“Winking And Nodding”: Method To Madness In GOP Talk Of Obama Impeachment
In times past, Sarah Palin’s blunt call for the impeachment of President Obama for his alleged bungling of the border crisis would have been laughed off, as it deservedly should. Simply consider the source to understand why. But Obama didn’t laugh it off. During his recent swing through Texas, without referring to Palin directly, he derisively mocked her impeachment call with the shout to an audience, “Sue me! Impeach me!”
Obama has heard this call before, many times, from the legion of right-wing bloggers, websites, and talk-show gabbers, and from a motley group of tea-party-affiliated GOP House reps. Though House Speaker John Boehner and GOP establishment leaders quickly squash any talk of impeachment, the truth is that the call is very much on their table, for very good cynical, crass, and politically chilling reasons. It’s the perfect ploy to further hector, cower, and intimidate Obama into backpedaling fast from the use of executive orders to get even faint action on his major initiatives on gun control, health care, jobs, education and transportation-spending measures, and of course immigration reform. The GOP-controlled House has repeatedly declared these measures “DOA” the instant they come from the White House. The GOP set this up nicely by hammering away on the myth that Obama is recklessly ignoring the Constitution by skirting Congress and going it alone in wielding the executive pen.
This is a gross falsehood. Obama is near the bottom on the list of presidents in the number of executive orders issued. The last president who issued orders at a lower rate than Obama was Grover Cleveland. GOP Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush issued far more executive orders per day in office than Obama. But then the issue is not, nor has it ever been, executive orders but intimidation, pure and simple.
The GOP knows that crying, “Obama is cavalierly using his executive power to bypass Congress and legislate from the Oval Office!” will trigger a powerful public backlash and reinforce its usual charge against him of dictatorial abuse. It has played this card with maximum skill in its fierce fight to wrest back control of the Senate. In this, the GOP can have it both ways on impeachment. Boehner and Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has also sharply dismissed talk of impeachment, can take the high ground on the issue by insisting that their goal is to get more Republicans elected in November — that’s Senate Republicans. But that’s exactly the point of tossing out the word. The hope is that this will stir more doubt and skepticism about Obama among many voters in the key states where GOP senatorial candidates and some House candidates are gunning to unseat Democratic incumbents.
The incessant talk of impeachment has yet another cynical plus for the GOP. It implants the ever-widening notion in the media that Obama is making a mighty effort to impose an “imperial presidency” on the nation. This charge is almost always accompanied by tossing out the words “arrogant,” “indifferent,” and “callous” to describe his alleged thumbed nose at Congress. Boehner played hard on this with his frivolous lawsuit against Obama over the use of executive orders. He self-righteously claimed that his aims were noble and pristine and designed only to protect the rights of the legislative branch against the alleged unconstitutional assault by Obama. This crude campaign to rock Obama and the Democrats back on their heels has gotten traction from a dozen court rulings that have rapped Obama on the issuance of executive orders.
Obama demanded to know how the GOP can sue and impeach him for doing his job. That’s the point. He’s done his job too well. A case in point is the hike in the minimum wage. The GOP adamantly opposes Obama’s proposal to hike the minimum wage. He had absolutely no chance of getting this through the House. Instead he issued an executive order that boosted the minimum wage only to new federal contracts issued, and then only if other terms of a contractual agreement change. This was entirely legal but had little overall effect on the nation’s wage structure. Yet it was significant in another respect.
It was a frontal challenge to the GOP to cease its relentless, dogged, and destructive campaign of dither, delay, deny, and obstruct anything that has the White House stamp on it. There’s always the possibility that the GOP’s loose talk about impeachment could backfire and turn off more voters than it turns on. It could make the GOP look even more rigid, rightist, and desperate to do and say anything to tarnish Obama, even at the risk of making itself look and sound even more ridiculous. The GOP’s hedge against this is to wink and nod at Palin’s call for impeachment while publicly disavowing it but still relentlessly assailing Obama as the “imperial president.” There’s a method to the madness in this ploy.
By: Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Author and Political Analyst, The Huffington Post Blog, July 15, 2014
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