The House Rules Committee authorized John Boehner’s lawsuit against President Obama today in a part-line vote.
The House Rules Committee vote was 7 in favor, 4 against. All the Republicans voted for it; all the Democrats voted against it. The legislation now goes to the floor of the House for a final vote, expected next week before Congress adjourns for a five-week summer recess.
“The president has repeated encroached on Congress’s power to write the laws,” said Rules Committee Chair Pete Sessions (R-TX). “Laws are not a mere list of suggestions from which a president can pick and choose.”
There’s more than one reason why this is awkward, but I’d first like to highlight one reason in particular that just occurred yesterday.
Speaker Boehner scolded the president yesterday for not using his executive authority to address the arrival of undocumented children on the border.
“I’d like to act. We’ve got a humanitarian crisis on the border that has to be dealt with,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters Wednesday. “The president clearly isn’t going to deal with it on his own, even though he has the authority to deal with it on his own. But I do believe that Congress should act, and I hope that we will.”
During his press conference this morning Speaker Boehner was asked about the president’s executive order barring discrimination against LGBT employees, but he declined to comment and dismissed the significance of executive orders in general.
Boehner asked for comment on Obama’s executive order on LGBT discrimination: “Nope. The president signs a lot of executive orders."
— Elise Foley (@elisefoley) July 24, 2014
Boehner dodges twice on Obama's LGBT order: "Listen, the president's going to make his decisions; he can."
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) July 24, 2014
He can make his decisions?
Does John Boehner even remember what he’s suing for?