Republicans Plan Frivolous Law Suit Against Barack Obama’s Use of Executive Power

After over fifty votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act the Republicans are in the need for another gimmick. John Boehner believes he has come up with a new one in suing Barack Obama for doing what he supported when Bush was president. Republicans are giving up their claimed opposition to frivolous law suits to sue Barack Obama for issuing Executive Orders despite the fact that Obama has used issues far fewer executive orders and signing statements than other recent president such as George Bush. As Paul Waldman wrote:

It’s irresistible to charge Republicans with hypocrisy, especially given the fact that they were unconcerned when the Bush administration pushed so vigorously at the limits of presidential power. Bush and his staff regularly ignored laws they preferred not to follow, often with the thinnest of justifications, whether it was claiming executive privilege to ignore congressional subpoenas or issuing 1,200 signing statements declaring the president’s intention to disregard certain parts of duly passed laws. (They pushed the limits of vice presidential power, too—Dick Cheney famously argued that since the vice president is also president of the Senate, he was a member of both the executive and legislative branches, yet actually a member of neither and thus not subject to either’s legal constraints. Seriously, he actually believed that.)

It is certainly hypocritical for Republicans to object to abuse of executive power after they backed Dick Cheney and George Bush’s claims on the Unitary Executive with virtually unlimited power. It is also notable that the problem stems from Republican abuses in the Congress which are responsible for the current gridlock which necessitates executive action.

This flip flop on executive orders includes Speaker Boehner personally:

President Obama has issued about 180 executive orders — a power that has been utilized by every president since George Washington except for the brief-tenured William Henry Harrison — and taken other executive actions. A Boehner spokesman denounced these as “a clear record of ignoring the American people’s elected representatives and exceeding his constitutional authority, which has dangerous implications for both our system of government and our economy.”

But Boehner embraced the power of a Republican president to take action, even at times when he would circumvent Congress by doing so. President George W. Bush’s issued hundreds of orders of his own over his eight years in office. In 2001 and 2007, Boehner strongly supported unilateral actions by Bush to prevent embryonic stem-cell research involving new embryos, saying the 2001 decision “preserves the sanctity of life and allows limited research that could help millions of Americans suffering from life-threatening diseases.” He endorsed a 2008 Bush executive order to limit earmarks. In the final days of Bush’s second term, he even wrote to the president asking him to use an executive order to exempt a historic steamboat from safety regulations after Congress opted not to do so.

Boehner even pushed for administrative compliance with one of President Obama’s executive orders. In 2010, he asked Obama for a progress report on implementation of an executive order banning taxpayer funding for abortion in Obamacare. In a letter to then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, he noted that the order had “paved the way” for the law’s passage and that the lack of update on implementation “does little to diminish widespread skepticism about the administration’s commitment to enforcing the Executive Order and preventing the law law from increasing federal support for abortion.”

Most likely this comes about in response to demands from the far right wing base. It has cost the Republicans a fortune to block most Tea Party challenges in the primaries this year. In the process the establishment Republican Party has become almost as radical as the Tea Party and is forced to pull stunts such as this. It is largely a way to appease those who are demanding impeachment after the Republicans saw how that worked for them when they tried it against Bill Clinton. I imagine many Democrats would love to see the Republicans try impeachment. For now they will have to settle for this, already using the threatened law suit to raise money.

Democrats have been more successful than Republicans in raising money so far this year with small Democratic donors contributing more to the Democrats than people like the Koch Brothers are donating to the Republicans.  This is undoubtedly coming from a small percentage of the country which is more politically engaged. Ideally we would have a higher percentage of the voters outraged by the Republican tactics and abuse of the democratic process. This is unlikely to occur as the Democrats lack the ability to make an issue out of the ways in which the Republicans abuse the system. Of course it is harder to make voters aware of such problems in a country in which only 40 percent are aware of which party controls which house of Congress.