Wasting Taxpayer Money, Speaker Boehner to 'Sue [President] Obama, AGAIN'
Republicans control both houses of Congress, but Speaker Boehner still doesn't have the wherewithal to legislate. House Republicans' latest lawsuit against the President is an embarrassing admission of failure… Republicans should stop wasting millions of taxpayer dollars suing the President, and start showing some seriousness for the security of the American people.
***
It's week four of Speaker Boehner's so-called "New American Congress" – and the House Republicans still haven't taken up a single jobs bill. Can you guess what the Speaker's planning to do instead? To…
The Speaker is finalizing plans to file suit against the president over his executive orders on immigration…Boehner told his conference at a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning that he has a team exploring the best options to challenge last year's executive action…"Our team has been working on litigation. We are finalizing a plan to authorize litigation on this issue—one we believe gives us the best chance of success," he said, according to a source in the room.
The move toward a lawsuit comes as the GOP's legislative options to target the president's policies are waning. The House passed a bill funding DHS including provisions rolling back Obama's executive action and other administrative relaxations of immigration enforcement, including deferred action for childhood arrivals, otherwise known as DREAMers. But the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where the immigration-related measures are not thought to be able to draw the requisite Democratic support to exceed the 60-vote filibuster threshold.
If the measure comes back to the House with less stringent measures targeting the White House's immigration policy — or indeed none at all — it is unclear that it can pass the chamber. So challenging the president in another venue than the Capitol could assuage GOP House members who have said unequivocally that they do not want to move any other immigration measures until the president's actions are dealt with. It is unclear whether a congressional lawsuit would also challenge the deferred action for childhood arrivals policy, which has already put off deportation for more than half-a-million undocumented immigrants. The House would have to vote on a resolution authorizing legal action, and that could come in the form of its own lawsuit, or in the form of joining an existing suit challenging Obama's actions.
That's the legacy of this Republican Congress: wasting taxpayer money on frivolous lawsuits against the President – instead of action for the Middle Class. This certainly isn't the first time that Speaker Boehner has wasted taxpayer money and diverted attention away from American priorities. On top of spending $2.3 million in taxpayer dollars defending discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA),
The House is already suing the administration on another issue. Last year, the House voted on a party-line to authorize a lawsuit challenging the [Affordable Care Act].
Mr. Speaker, the American people aren't asking for a waste of their taxpayer money with more lawsuits. Another irresponsible and dangerous suit against the President of the United States won't rebuild our nation's infrastructure – and it won't grow the paychecks of working families the middle class.