“Coward Of The House”: John Boehner’s Pathetic Lawsuit Reveals His Weakness
Never underestimate the cynicism of House Speaker John Boehner. The day after he told reporters he opposed the impeachment of President Obama, he announced plans to go ahead with an unprecedented lawsuit, on grounds so puny as to be laughable. The speaker will sue the president, he says, for postponing the imposition of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate for a year and waiving the fine it imposed.
So: after all of Boehner’s huffing and puffing about the president’s lawlessness, after an op-ed that claimed Obama had abused his power on “a range of issues, including his health care law, energy regulations, foreign policy and education,” he wants to sue him for not implementing a minor ACA provision Republicans are known to oppose, within a law they want to repeal entirely? And as NBC’s First Read notes, Boehner didn’t advocate suing President Bush in 2006 when he waived penalties for low-income seniors who missed the deadline to sign up for new Medicare prescription benefits.
Clearly Boehner’s silly lawsuit is a sop to his party’s right-wing base. But he’s throwing table scraps while the wing nuts want red meat. The GOP establishment, such as it is, has apparently decided impeachment is a bad political detour for the party. Yet few of the conservative voices now speaking out against impeaching the president have the courage to say: “It’s because he hasn’t done anything that would be grounds for impeachment.” Instead, they focus on the terrible politics for their party in a midterm election year when they’re expected to do well.
Boehner merely said “I disagree” when asked about Sarah Palin’s Facebook rant demanding that the House GOP impeach Obama – and then he fleshed out his alternative legal plan. The man who gave us Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain, said Thursday: “There are not the votes here in the United States Senate to impeach the president of the United States and I think that we should focus our attention on winning elections.”
A Wall Street Journal anti-impeachment editorial did acknowledge, though almost in an aside, that “while Mr. Obama’s abuses of executive power are serious, they don’t rise to that level.” But the bulk of “The Impeachment Delusion” was spent on the bad politics of such a move, calling it “inherently a political process that at the current moment would backfire on Republicans,” given they have a decent chance of retaking the Senate.
Meanwhile, the WSJ is hyping Boehner’s lawsuit as essential to rein in Obama’s wanton use of “imperial powers.” The worshipful editorial, with the unintentionally hilarious headline “Boehner stands up,” opened “All due credit to John Boehner.”
That ought to win over the party’s right wing base. Then again, probably not.
The wimpiness of the GOP establishment just furthers the sense of the party’s implacable Obama haters that they have a claim against this illegitimate president, but the leadership is just too spineless and craven to drive him out of the White House. If he’s using “imperial powers,” as the Journal says, and he’s “changing and creating his own laws, and excusing himself from enforcing statutes he is sworn to uphold,” as Boehner claims, the House has a remedy, and it’s impeachment.
Establishment Republicans are praising Boehner’s lawsuit for finding a novel way to solve the problem that’s stymied all other congressional attempts to sue the president: their utter lack of standing to bring such a suit, given that they can’t show they’ve been harmed by the action at issue. Backed by right wing scholars David Rivkin and Elizabeth Foley, the speaker will make the case that since it’s not possible for any private individual to show harm in the case of the employer mandate, the courts should let Congress step in.
Few legal experts outside the confines of conservativism are convinced.
“I see this every day now, being covered as if it’s real, as if it’s somehow not a joke,” Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar told Vox.com. “But can they name a single successful lawsuit in American history that is of close precedent to what they are proposing?” Amar doesn’t know of one. “At a certain point, I get to call Birther-ism. I get to call bullshit.”
I’ve been thinking about Birtherism a bit here, too. On the one hand, it’s great that Boehner quickly scotched Palin’s talk of impeachment. On the other, it would have been nice had he, and the rest of the party leadership, done the same when Birtherism, and talk of the president as Kenyan Muslim Kenyan usurper, broke out on the right wing fringe in 2009.
But Boehner refused to stand up to his party’s Birthers and Obama-is-a-Muslim loons. “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think,” he said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” shortly after being elected speaker in 2011. Yet now he thinks it’s his job to tell the American people to think that the president is abusing his powers. Boehner’s stunt is impeachment-lite, or impeachment for cowards. Instead of quelling the fire burning in the party base, it is likely to stoke it.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, July 11, 2014
“Benghazi, The Cost Of An Obsession”: A Farcical Waste Of Time And Money
The furious, year-and-a-half-old effort to turn the deadly Benghazi attack into a Watergate-level scandal has so far failed. Naturally that hasn’t stopped Republicans from howling at hearings and turning over seat cushions in search of evidence. “Naturally,” because the Republican base has so far embraced these tactics.
But the Democrats, who for the most part have responded to the hysteria with loud sighs, are increasing their efforts to change the politics of the endless investigation by showing that it’s a farcical waste of time and money.
So it was that on Monday Nancy Pelosi provided journalists with a document revealing this year’s anticipated operating costs for the 12-member select committee on the Benghazi attacks. House Republicans have apparently requested $3.3 million for the panel, which will be composed of seven Republican lawmakers, five Democrats and an expected staff of 30.
USA Today put that figure in perspective:
Since the Benghazi committee was created in May, its full-year equivalent budget would be more than $5 million. This is more than the House Intelligence Committee, which has a $4.4 million budget this year and spent $4.1 million last year. The largest House committees — Energy and Commerce; Oversight and Government Reform; Transportation and Infrastructure — have budgets between $8 million and $9.5 million for the year.
A special committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming created by Democrats in 2007 spent about $2 million a year until it was shut down by the new Republican majority in January 2011.
The $3.3 million doesn’t count as a new expenditure since it will come from legislative branch funds that have already been appropriated. But this kind of profligacy won’t help the Republicans sell themselves as fiscal conservatives.
By: Juliet Lapados, Taking Note, Editor’s Blog, The New York Times, July 8, 2014
“Boehner’s Imaginary Allegations”: Speaker Still Struggling To Explain Anti-Obama Lawsuit
No one seems quite as happy about House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) anti-Obama lawsuit as President Obama himself. For the West Wing, the Republican litigation helps prove to the public, in a rather definitive way, that Obama’s governing while GOP lawmakers in Congress sit around and complain. Indeed, the frivolous case is effectively a bold announcement that the Republican-led House wants the federal government to be paralyzed indefinitely – which is hardly a winning message in an election year.
And so the president has ended up talking more about Boehner’s prospective lawsuit than Boehner has. “I told [the House Speaker], ‘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,” Obama said last week. “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.”
Yesterday, Boehner responded with a CNN op-ed, defending the litigation he has not yet filed. It’s worth scrutinizing in detail.
[T]oo often over the past five years, the President has circumvented the American people and their elected representatives through executive action, changing and creating his own laws.
First, the Speaker needs to understand, in a “Schoolhouse Rock” sort of way, that the White House cannot create its own laws. That’s gibberish. Obama can create policies through executive orders and executive actions, but those aren’t literally new laws. Second, to help bolster his case about Obama abuses, Boehner referenced exactly zero specific examples.
What’s disappointing is the President’s flippant dismissal of the Constitution we are both sworn to defend.
No, holding the debt ceiling hostage, vowing to crash the global economy on purpose while ignoring the “Full Faith and Credit” of the United States is a “flippant dismissal of the Constitution.” Obama’s use of executive authority, on the other hand, is fairly routine.
I know the President is frustrated. I’m frustrated. The American people are frustrated, too. After years of slow economic growth and high unemployment under President Obama, they are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’
Boehner may not remember this – 2008 seems like a long time ago – but Obama inherited the worst economic conditions since the Great Depression. The president proceeded to turn the economy around, no thanks to Boehner, who demanded a five-year spending freeze at the height of the crisis, and has fought ever since for fewer investments, less capital, less demand, and higher unemployment through laid off public-sector workers.
As for where the jobs are, the United States is currently on track for the best year for job creation since the 1990s and June was the 52nd consecutive month in which we’ve seen private-sector job growth – the longest streak on record. Why didn’t Boehner read the jobs report?
The House has passed more than 40 jobs bills that would help.
No, not really.
Washington taxes and regulations always make it harder for private sector employers to meet payrolls, invest in new initiatives and create jobs – but how can those employers plan, invest and grow when the laws are changing on the President’s whim at any moment?
First, if presidential whims periodically change American law outside the constitutional system, then Congress would have a responsibility to impeach the president. Since this allegation is imaginary, however, there’s no need. Second, if Boehner is concerned about employers’ confidence in economic stability, the Speaker can approve resources for the Highway Trust Fund and stop playing games with the economy (again).
If House Republicans have a legitimate complaint, shouldn’t it be easier for Boehner to make his case?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 7, 2014
“Republicans Have A Choice”: Their Donors, Their Right-Wingers, Or A Government Shutdown
It looks like the one big(gish) substantive consequence of Eric Cantor’s exit from the House Republican leadership will be the demise of the Export-Import bank. Or at least it looks very likely that John Boehner (who supports the Export-Import bank) will allow its authorization to lapse rather than pick a fight with conservative hardliners in the House.
The fact that the bank’s authorization expires on the same day that federal appropriations expire has analysts wondering whether it will end up at the center of a tug-of-war over funding the government, precipitating a shutdown. And that, in turn, has conservatives salivating over the prospect of “Democrats shut[ting] down the government” to protect corporate welfare.
First, allow me to disclose that I really don’t care very much what happens to the Export-Import bank, which subsidizes U.S. exports with loans and loan guarantees to insure against non-payment by importers. I guess the one convincing argument for reauthorizing it temporarily, or reforming and reauthorizing it, is that it probably is providing a modest boost to the economy at the moment, but generally liberals and hardline conservatives agree, for slightly different reasons, that the bank should go. Establishment Republicans, by contrast, really like the Ex-Im bank, which explains why Democrats are happy to set aside whatever misgivings they might have about it in order to exploit the division within the Republican conference.
That division is also why any talk of Democrats shutting down the government to protect Ex-Im is basically dishonest spin.
I think there’s almost no chance anyone will shut down the government over the Ex-Im bank, but if a shutdown happens, it will come as a consequence of Boehner wimping out, not of anything Democrats might do.
To my mind, there are at least four ways a fight over Ex-Im could play out within a fight over funding the government. Half of them end with the elimination of the Ex-Im bank. Only one ends with a government shutdown, and it would be on House Republicans.
I’ve simplified the processes involved here, for the sake of clarity, but in order of escalating complexity, the scenarios are as follows:
1. The House passes a bill to fund the government and sends it to the Senate, where Republicans successfully filibuster any attempt to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank. Harry Reid caves. Result: Ex-Im bank eliminated.
2. The House passes a bill to fund the government and sends it to the Senate where Democrats and Republicans tweak it to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank, among other things. It goes back to the House, where Boehner “caves” and puts it on the floor. Result: Ex-Im bank survives.
2a. The House passes a bill to fund the government and sends it to the Senate where Democrats and Republicans amend it to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank. It goes back to the House, where Boehner allows a vote on a measure to strip the Ex-Im authorization out of the legislation, but the measure fails thanks to the support of an overwhelming number of Democrats and a large contingent of Republicans. Result: Ex-Im bank survives, Republicans crow disingenuously about how Democrats are the real crony-capitalists.
3. The House passes a bill to fund the government and sends it to the Senate where Democrats and Republicans amend it to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank. It goes back to the House, where Boehner can neither muster the nerve to affirmatively strip the authorization (and anger donors) nor the nerve to put the whole bill on the floor (and anger conservatives). So he does nothing. Result: Boehner shuts down the government, Ex-Im bank in limbo.
4. The House passes a bill to fund the government and sends it to the Senate where Democrats and Republicans amend it to reauthorize the Ex-Im bank. It goes back to the House, where Boehner chooses his speakership over his big business allies, and rounds up Republican votes to strip the authorization out of the bill. The House sends the bill back to the Senate where Reid caves. Result: Ex-Im bank eliminated.
Note, I have baked into these scenarios an assumption that Senate Democrats won’t refuse to fund the government unless the Ex-Im bank survives because most Democrats a) Don’t really care that much about the bank, b) are mainly just interested in exploiting Republican divisions, c) want to make a point to conservative big business donors about the incredibly bad investment they’ve made in House Republicans, and d) aren’t an inherently reactionary bunch like their counterparts in the House GOP.
For what it’s worth, I think option 2a is the kabuki show we’re most likely to see. I think the GOP leadership’s overweening interest in not shutting down the government will carry here, which means scenario 3 is the least likely. But either way, Boehner and Mitch McConnell will have to make some fairly consequential decisions in the next few months.
By: Brian Beutler, The New Republic, June 27, 2014
“John Boehner Deflects Attention By Suing The President”: How House GOP Circumvents Its Responsibility To Engage In Governing
President Obama was generous on Thursday in referring to Speaker John Boehner’s proposed lawsuit against him as a “stunt,” a word generally used to mean a playful attempt to get attention. In fact, the suit is a mean-spirited attempt to deflect attention — specifically from the House’s refusal to engage in the act of governing.
For the foreseeable future, there will be no action to boost the economy, or help minimum-wage workers, or extend unemployment insurance, or address climate change. Immigration reform is dead. The most basic appropriations bills are likely to get bogged down in Republican attempts to promote coal burning and rein in the Clean Water Act. There is already talk of another in an endless series of stopgap spending bills, the surest sign of a non-functioning Congress. And the Tea Party would love nothing more than another shutdown fight or even impeachment hearings.
Mr. Boehner’s lawsuit, which he said will challenge the president’s use of executive authority, was designed in part to appease the far-right corner. But more substantively, it is part of Mr. Boehner’s long-running strategy to pretend there is a legitimate reason for the years of obstruction.
He can’t very well explain to the public that the real reason there has been no action on immigration reform is because large swaths of the Republican base dislike Hispanic immigrants. And so he had to construct a way to blame Mr. Obama for the inaction.
“Speaker Boehner has been very clear about this: He wants to fix America’s broken immigration system,” his spokesman, Michael Steel, said last month. “But no one trusts the White House to enforce the law as written.” He can’t be trusted because he allowed the children of immigrants who came to this country illegally to remain without fear of deportation, an executive action that may be on the list of particulars in the lawsuit. (Mr. Boehner hasn’t said which actions prompted him to sue.)
Coal-state lawmakers can’t admit they would rather foul the air than hurt the short-term interests of their states’ biggest industries and employers, so they pretend they are angry about a procedural matter: Mr. Obama’s “overreach” in directing environmental regulators to enforce carbon standards without the permission of Congress.
And Republicans care not in the least about the substance of the administration’s actions in delaying parts of the Affordable Care Act; instead they see each administrative action as an opportunity to portray the president as tyrannical. “We didn’t elect a monarch or a king,” Mr. Boehner told the House in a letter on Wednesday outlining his legal plans.
Royalty is a laughable way to describe a president who had to struggle to get his own aides confirmed by the Senate, and was forced to use an experimental legal maneuver to keep entire agencies functioning. Mr. Obama’s attempt to use recess appointments to get around the Republican refusal to confirm any members to the National Labor Relations Board, regardless of qualification, was slapped back by the Supreme Court on Thursday. Republicans immediately claimed the court, too, has become angered by the president’s imperialism, refusing to acknowledge the president had acted out of desperation to get around their own unprecedented level of resistance.
Mr. Boehner’s diversion is the ultimate in frivolous lawsuits — a subject he knows well, since he frequently applies the word “frivolous” to the lawsuits he doesn’t like, including those fighting discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace. But it is likely to fail in both its legal objective and its larger purpose. Americans are pretty good at detecting phony excuses to get out of work.
By: David Firestone, Taking Note, Editorial Page Editors Blog, The New York Times, June 27, 2014
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