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The House v. President Barack Obama

House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) this week announced he’ll introduce a bill to instruct the House General Counsel to sue President Obama for failure to “faithfully execute his oath of office” to “protect our system of government and our economy from continued executive abuse.”

Blame it on the upcoming midterm elections and the GOP’s manic zeal to retain the House and take control of the Senate, or agree with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) it’s all just “subterfuge” to distract from a do-nothing Congress, anyway you cut it, this is not action to be taken lightly.

This shouldn’t have been such a shocker.  In March, a House bill to make it easier to sue a sitting President was approved 233-181, a party line vote save for five Dems who jumped on the GOP train.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) said the measure was “dead on arrival” in the Senate; the President vowed to veto it if it ever landed on his desk.

This week White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters: “They are considering a taxpayer-funded lawsuit against the President of the United States for doing his job.  This lawsuit is nothing that’s going to consume the attention of the White House,” adding “we feel completely confident” the President acted in his authority.”  For himself, President Obama says he “works around Congress” because he must when the legislative branch refuses or can’t act on issues of the day.

The legal action is being taken, Boehner said, because President Obama “ignores some statutes completely, selectively enforces others, and at times, creates laws of his own.”  He cited Obama actions on the health care law, gay marriage, climate/energy, foreign policy, education and immigration where “President Obama has repeatedly run an end-around on the American people and their elected legislators…”

“If the current President can selectively enforce, change or create laws as he chooses with impunity…his successors will do the same…giving the president king-like authority at the expense of the American people,” the Ohio lawmaker said, adding he’s constantly asked by citizens why the House hasn’t acted before now.  “We elected a president, Americans note; we didn’t elect a monarch or a king,” he says.

This comes down to Boehner’s faith in the judicial branch of government to referee a dispute between the legislative and executive branches, and that the outcome will somehow change the hearts and minds of parties on both sides of this dispute.  The House can take this action only if it can demonstrate no one else can challenge the President, harm is being done to the general welfare and trust in execution of the law, there is no legislative remedy, and there’s “explicit House authorization for the lawsuit, through a vote authorizing litigation against the President.”

I see both sides of this issue, but I’ve still not fully digested the implications of the suit per se, nor the implications of the President losing, or for that matter, the House losing the suit.

Frustration with Congress being unable to find its backend with both hands and flashlight is palpable in this town and across the country.  I empathize with the President.  The likes of Reid and Boehner automatically rejecting the actions of the opposite chamber for purely partisan reasons is childish and short-sighted.  Immigration reform is an excellent example; there’s no logical reason the House should continue to reject out-of-hand the Senate’s comprehensive, bipartisan reform bill.

However, impatience and frustration with the system are no justification to ignore the law you’ve sworn to uphold.  We are all taught that without the rule of law and a citizenry which obeys the law, we’d have chaos.  The President is an attorney who taught constitutional law.  Shouldn’t he be the model to whom we turn?  But he almost boasts when he ignores chunks of this or that law, modifies enacted bills to suit his own interpretation of what they should require rather than what they do say and require, and he effectively creates “orders” with the force of law as if Congress didn’t exist.

The President, Boehner and the rest of Congress weren’t elected because we all truly believe these are the smartest people in the room all the time.  We deemed them the best of who was on the ballot at the time; implicit in that is our assumption they should be smart enough to sit down is a room, check their egos and partisanship at the door and work this stuff out without all the schoolyard taunts, name calling and the blame game.  Certainly extra-legal actions are unnecessary on both sides.

Said President Franklin D. Roosevelt:  “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”

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