The GOP Poutfest Ignited: House Republicans Sue President Obama Over ACA

Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:42 pm

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In case you needed a study in contrasts, today we have Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) using taxpayer money to sue President Obama over the implementation of the ACA (aka, Obamacare)- a suit that nearly every reasonable person has told them has no merit and a suit that two law firms dumped the GOP over, while just hours ago President Obama did Republicans’ jobs for them by doing something to fix our broken immigration system. One of these entities is not really doing their job. It’s the ultimate GOP poutfest.

In a press release, Speaker Boehner announced his temper tantrum is indeed going public:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today announced that the House of Representatives – consistent with the House-passed resolution H.Res. 676 – has filed litigation over President Obama’s unilateral actions on his health care law:

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and re-write federal law on his own without a vote of Congress. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work. If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well. The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.”

Republicans pretend that the President doesn’t have authority to tweak the implementation of a policy, but he does. But Republicans aren’t really upset over his implementation changes; they’re trying to save face with the Tea base. After all, they spent years telling you that Obama was killing everyone with Obamacare. The Death Panels, etc. And now that none of that has happened and people actually like their Obamacare, Republicans must distract with more noise.

It should come as no surprise that Republicans don’t do anything but troll Democratic presidents. They did this to Clinton and made fools of themselves and here they are again, making mountains out of hypocritical molehills and hysterically screeching and pouting constantly. There have barely been a few moments when we could celebrate a sane, rational, reasonable Republican in the last six years. They have become a party of crying babies and this lawsuit is just the beginning. After last night’s immigration action announcement, Republicans admitted the President has their balls in a vice grip. So like the children they are, they will react.

Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi tried to hold in her contempt, “After scouring Washington for months, Republicans have finally found a TV lawyer to file their meritless lawsuit. While the American people want Congress to get serious about creating good-paying jobs and strengthening the middle class, House Republicans are paying $500-an-hour in taxpayer money to sue the President of the United States.”

Pelosi called Republicans out for trying to undermine the legislative process that legally passed the ACA after much vigorous, public debate, “The fact is, this lawsuit is a bald-faced attempt to achieve what Republicans have been unable to achieve through the political process. The legislative branch cannot sue simply because they disagree with the way a law passed by a different Congress has been implemented. It is clear, as one leading legal scholar put it, that this lawsuit is ‘an embarrassing loser.'”

An embarrassing loser it is, at least according to constitutional scholars. But this is what reactionaries, who don’t like that all Americans have access to affordable health insurance, do. For all of the GOP’s trolling over Obamacare, not once have they offered a viable, detailed alternative other than No Care. And that matters, because it highlights yet again that Republicans don’t really have a rational, ideological objection to Obamacare; but rather, they are simply obstructing everything this President does, because that is their on the record political strategy.

That’s a no to caring about the American people and putting aside political end games and a yes to catering to extremists and special interests out of weakness and desperation.

Sarah Jones

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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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