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Republicans challenge Obama’s executive actions, file lawsuit over Obamacare Republicans challenge Obama’s executive actions, file lawsuit over Obamacare
(34 minutes later)
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Friday fired twin salvos at President Obama’s recent executive actions, announcing a House lawsuit challenging the implementation of the 2010 health-care law and vowing to counter Obama’s move to provide relief to millions of illegal immigrants with legislative action. The political war over President Obama’s controversial policy changes on deportation escalated Friday as the White House pledged to forcefully sell the overhauls to the American people, while many Republicans vowed to derail his efforts.
In a clearly coordinated campaign against what Republicans have labeled as Obama’s “imperial presidency,” Boehner announced the filing of the lawsuit minutes after he publicly denounced Obama’s executive action on immigration. And later in the day, the first legislative hearing on the immigration order was scheduled. Obama went to Nevada Friday to begin what the White House described as a “very aggressive” effort to promote the changes but also to chide his Republican critics for opposing immigration reform.
“If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well,” Boehner said in a statement. “The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.” “We’re not a nation that kicks out strivers and dreamers who want to earn their piece of the American dream,” Obama said. “We didn’t raise the Statue of Liberty with her back to the world. We did it with her light shining.”
The suit, which was approved by House Republicans four months ago, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the federal courthouse where most battles between the executive and legislative branches get resolved. It will be led by Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University Law School, who is the third legal adviser to handle the case. Back in Washington, Republicans were launching their own assaults, announcing that the House GOP had filed a lawsuit challenging the implementation of the 2010 health-care law and promising to turn back the immigration effort.
Two other law firms had been hired to take the case but later dropped it, with Republicans saying they had received political pressure from partners to bow out and Democrats charging that the case has no constitutional merits. “We’re working with our members and looking at the options available to us,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said, “but I will say to you the House will, in fact, act.”
Republicans are focusing on Obama’s move to delay portions of the law that mandated larger employers offer health coverage for their full-time employees or face certain tax penalties. As the rollout of the law became increasingly chaotic in 2013, Obama issued an order to delay portions of the mandate. In what was clearly a coordinated campaign against what Republicans have labeled as Obama’s “imperial presidency,” Boehner announced the filing of the lawsuit minutes after he denounced Obama’s executive action on immigration.
The suit also alleges that the administration planned to illegally planned to pay an estimated $175 billion over the next decade, in addition to $3 billion already paid this past year, to insurance companies, even though Congress hasn’t provided that money. The suit, which was approved by House Republicans four months ago, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In recent weeks, some Republicans have pushed for including the immigration order in the lawsuit against the president. Instead, Boehner promised action in the House to counter Obama’s plans.
Now, in their challenge on executive actions, the House GOP is confronting Obama for altering that portion of the law. “The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.”
In recent weeks, some Republicans have pushed for including the immigration order in the lawsuit against the president, but that is not the case for now. Instead, Boehner promised action in the House to counter Obama’s plans. Obama launched his own persuasion campaign at a high school in Las Vegas, where he issued a call for immigration reform shortly after the start of his second term.
“We’re working with our members and looking at the options available to us, but I will say to you the House will, in fact, act,” Boehner told reporters Friday morning in the first televised Republican rebuttal to Obama’s prime-time address Thursday night. “Nearly two years ago, I came here, Del Sol High School, right in this gymnasium . . . and I said that the time had come for Congress to fix our broken immigration system,” he said. Obama argued that lack of action by the GOP House is what forced his hand on taking unilateral action.
Boehner declined to spell out exactly how Republicans would counter the immigration executive actions, which extend protections to roughly 4 million undocumented parents of legal U.S. citizens and young immigrants brought here illegally when they were children. “The fact that a year and a half has gone by means that time has been wasted,” Obama said. “And during that time, families have been separated. And during that time, businesses have been harmed. And we can’t afford it anymore.”
Later in the day, the House Homeland Security Committee announced plans to hold a hearing in response to Obama’s executive action. The panel said it will meet on Dec. 3 to hear testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson, who helped formulate Obama’s plans and deeply explored the legal justifications for the president’s actions. Earlier on Friday, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said that the president’s Las Vegas appearance should be read as the start of a “very aggressive sales job” on behalf of his policy changes.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), who chairs the panel and has worked for several years on border security matters, said he plans to use “every tool at my disposal to stop the president’s unconstitutional actions from being implemented, starting with this oversight hearing.” He added that Johnson “will have the opportunity to answer the American people’s questions, including how DHS will secure our border and prevent additional illegal immigration.” The president will also make his case on weekend television in an interview on ABC’S “This Week” and in a Chicago address on Tuesday. The White House’s sales job will include presidential speeches, interviews and appearances by Cabinet officials. Pfeiffer also said the White House’s efforts would be built around a heavy digital effort, previewed in the president’s video on Facebook prior to his Thursday night speech, which drew more than 3.5 million views, according to Pfeiffer. “Our big focus [initially] was the digital audience,” he said. “We are going to use all the tools at our disposal.”
At his news conference, Boehner dodged a question about the assertion by one of his own leadership team members, House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), that there was little Congress could do to restrict funding for the new program. Rogers and his staff said Thursday that funding for the implementation of the new policy does not come from the annual spending bills approved by Congress but instead comes from border fees, placing it outside the reach of congressional Republicans. Pfeiffer said Obama would challenge critics of his executive action to pass legislation permanently reforming the immigration system, while at the same time making the moral case of deferring the deportations of millions of undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a leading opponent of the president’s action and likely incoming chairman of the budget committee, told reporters Thursday that he would support attaching a policy rider onto the government funding bills that simply forbid the federal workforce from implementing the new rules on immigration. “There’s no reward for the meek here,” Pfeiffer said.
Speaking Friday at the Heritage Foundation, Sessions said such action was necessary because Obama “granted amnesty to five million people, and he did it by basically saying, ‘I’m not going to enforce the laws of the United States of America.’ The Republican response to Obama was anything but meek.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a leading opponent of the president’s action and the likely incoming chairman of the budget committee, accused Obama of refusing to enforce the law and promised to use budgetary measures to prevent funding for the implementation of the new immigration rules.
Speaking Friday at the Heritage Foundation, Sessions said such action was necessary because Obama “granted amnesty to 5 million people, and he did it by basically saying, ‘I’m not going to enforce the laws of the United States of America.’
“He ignored the interests of the American people, the American workers, recent immigrants who have been here and are looking for jobs in a time of unemployment. He undermined, in my view, the moral integrity of immigration law. And even the constitutional separation of powers. You have to have integrity and consistency in law enforcement if you want to be able to defend what you have done.”“He ignored the interests of the American people, the American workers, recent immigrants who have been here and are looking for jobs in a time of unemployment. He undermined, in my view, the moral integrity of immigration law. And even the constitutional separation of powers. You have to have integrity and consistency in law enforcement if you want to be able to defend what you have done.”
Sessions is leading the effort to keep government funding on a short leash in the new year, when Republicans take over the Senate and control both chambers of Congress, making it easier to get clear majorities for his preferred line of attack.Sessions is leading the effort to keep government funding on a short leash in the new year, when Republicans take over the Senate and control both chambers of Congress, making it easier to get clear majorities for his preferred line of attack.
Sessions dismissed the immigration reform bill the Senate passed last year, saying: “politicians will pass anything that sounds good about immigration as long as it doesn’t change anything, as long as it won’t work.” Sessions dismissed the immigration reform bill the Senate passed last year, saying: “Politicians will pass anything that sounds good about immigration as long as it doesn’t change anything, as long as it won’t work.”
“The Gang of Eight bill, the comprehensive bill that they put forward, had the best talking points. I one time said, ‘I’m for the talking points, let’s vote on them.’ But when you read the fine print it wasn’t there,” he said. “It was another piece of legislation that was actually capable of letting the illegality to continue in the interest of certain powerful forces to be rewarded.” But there are those in the GOP who worry that the anger may be playing into the president’s hands.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Friday that a growing group of Senate Republicans is coalescing around a more tempered rebuttal to the president: passing a series of standalone immigration bills in the coming months and demonstrating to voters that the party can govern.
“Put legislation on the president’s desk,” Flake said. “We could do bills on border security, interior enforcement, mandatory E-Verify, and address high-tech workers and guest workers.”
Flake said that there are limits to the idea of using appropriations legislation as a vehicle for GOP ultimatums or blocking the president’s federal nominees.
“It’d a political disaster to flirt with a government shutdown,” Flake said. “In the Senate, I don’t think we’ll go there, and I hope the House does not go there. There are always temptations, but I know the leadership doesn’t want that.” On blocking nominees, “That’s not the way to go, either. You play into the Democrats’ hands.”
Limiting funding would require a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, and it would almost certainly draw a veto from Obama, which, critics say, would lead to a possible shutdown of some federal agencies.Limiting funding would require a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate, and it would almost certainly draw a veto from Obama, which, critics say, would lead to a possible shutdown of some federal agencies.
Boehner deflected those questions and instead blamed Obama for issuing too many executive orders to modify the controversial new health law that took effect over the last year, which left his rank-and-file Republicans unwilling to trust the president and refusing to even consider a broad rewrite of immigration laws. Boehner declined to spell out exactly how Republicans would counter the immigration executive actions, which extend protections to roughly 4 million undocumented parents of legal U.S. citizens and young immigrants brought here illegally when they were children.
“He created an environment where the members could not trust him, and trying to find a way to work together was virtually impossible, and I had warned the president over and over that his actions were making it impossible for me to do what he wanted me to do,” the speaker said, explaining his inability to even consider smaller pieces of the 2013 Senate-approved legislation that revamped border and immigration laws. Later in the day, the House Homeland Security Committee announced plans to hold a hearing in response to Obama’s executive action. The panel said it will meet on Dec. 3 to hear testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who helped formulate Obama’s plans and deeply explored the legal justifications for the president’s actions.
“We have a broken immigration system, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it, and we ought to do it through the democratic process,” he said. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.), who chairs the panel and has worked for several years on border-security matters, said he plans to use “every tool at my disposal to stop the president’s unconstitutional actions from being implemented, starting with this oversight hearing.”
In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.” Obama essentially blamed Boehner for not allowing an immigration bill to come to the House floor.
Conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year. “I cajoled and I called and I met. I told John Boehner, I’ll wash your car, I’ll walk your dog — whatever you need to do, just call the bill. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. And if the votes hadn’t been there, then we would have had to start over. But at least give it a shot — and he didn’t do it.”
In a floor speech Thursday, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January. A Boehner spokesman said that the speaker does not have a dog.
Many conservative lawmakers are shrugging off those pleas, however. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Paul Kane and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action to the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.
And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN.
Robert Costa and Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.