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 The House Rules Committee made public a "discussion draft" of
legislation to authorize legal action against the president for
misusing executive orders and other unilateral actions to advance
his agenda.
House Speaker John Boehner first announced plans for a House lawsuit
against Obama late last month.
The draft does not mention specific grievances, but gives Boehner
authority to seek injunctive relief for failure by Obama and members
of his administration for failure to act in a manner consistent with
the Constitution and U.S. laws "with respect to implementation of
(including failure to implement) the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act."
Republican lawmakers, who have been trying unsuccessfully to repeal
the 2010 law for years, regularly decry the Obama administration's
decision to delay Obamacare coverage mandates and grant various
waivers as illegal without congressional approval.
The moves come less than four months before congressional elections
in which Republicans are trying to expand their House majority and
wrest control of the Senate from Obama's fellow Democrats.
In a statement on Thursday, Boehner said, "This isn't about
Republicans versus Democrats; it's about the legislative branch
versus the executive branch and above all protecting the
Constitution."
It also comes amid chatter from some corners of the Republican Party
that the House should initiate impeachment procedures that would be
the first step toward trying to remove Obama from office.
Boehner has tamped down such talk.
Democratic Representative Steve Israel, who heads his party's
efforts to retake majority control of the House, derided the
Republicans' pending suit as a "stunt".
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"First this Republican Congress shut down the government over the
Affordable Care Act and cost the economy billions of dollars. Now,
they’re spending millions more to sue the president over ACA,"
Israel said in a statement.The Rules Committee language kept a tight
focus on Obamacare, instead of casting a wide net against the
president's actions.
Republicans have complained about many of Obama's recent moves,
including raising the federal minimum wage for federal contractors,
implementing new pollution controls on coal-fired power plants,
suspending deportations against some undocumented residents and
extending family leave rights nationwide to workers in same-sex
marriages.
In the face of Republican resistance to his agenda, Obama
increasingly has talked about looking for ways of using his
executive authority to circumvent legislative logjams.
Assuming the Republican-controlled House passed the lawsuit
authorization, it likely would take a long time for the case to wind
its way through U.S. courts.
Obama has criticized the Republican threats of a lawsuit.
"You're going to sue me for doing my job? OK. I mean, think about
that, you're going to use taxpayer money to sue me for doing my job,
while you don't do your job," Obama said in remarks to political
donors on Thursday in Austin, Texas.
(Reporting By Richard Cowan and David Lawder and Steve Holland in
Texas; editing by Andrew Hay)
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