As we all by now know Boner, đ uh I mean Boehner is threatening to sue President Obama, well here are the issues and the reality The public first learned about House Speaker John Boehnerâs (R-Ohio) plan to file an anti-Obama lawsuit on June 24, more than two full weeks ago. Asked for an explanation, the Republican leader struggled â Boehner knew he wanted to sue the president, though he didnât know why â but the in the process, he gave his team all kinds of time to think of something. As the put-up-or-shut-up moment approached, the pressure was on the Speaker to follow through in a big way. Yesterday, Boehner blew it. Speaker John Boehner has released a bill that would authorize him to sue the White House over its implementation of the Affordable Care Act. âThe current president believes he has the power to make his own laws â at times even boasting about it,â Boehner said in a statement Thursday. âHe has said that if Congress wonât make the laws he wants, heâll go ahead and make them himself, and in the case of the employer mandate in his health care law, thatâs exactly what he did.â In reality, delaying implementation of a minor provision of a law and making law unilaterally are not the same thing. Indeed, the Speakerâs office went on to say the White House âliterally waivedâ the law, which simply isnât true â delaying part of a law isnât the same as literally waiving it. Those who canât understand the difference probably shouldnât pursue a career in legislating. Regardless, even many of Obamaâs most vituperative critics would be forgiven for asking, âThatâs it?â at this point. For weeks, Boehner characterized the president as an out-of-control tyrant, but when push came to shove, the Speaker ignored his partyâs concerns about immigration, the environment, and economic measures, and instead moved forward on one thing: a year-old delay in an obscure policy most Americans have never heard of. For all the overheated rhetoric about the presidentâs lengthy list of abuses, this was the best Boehner could come up with. As Brian Beutler put it, âTodayâs story is that the GOP has spent weeks and weeks accusing Obama of unbridled lawlessness, when they didnât really have the goods.â Looking ahead, whatâs the likely result of the lawsuit? Itâs probably easier to consider this in Q&A form. * Whatâs first? The House majority will have to agree to move forward with Boehnerâs litigation plan, at which point itâll go to federal court, where Republicans will have to demonstrate they have standing. * Wonât that be difficult for the GOP? Almost certainly, yes. When filing a lawsuit, a plaintiff needs to be able to demonstrate that he or she has been harmed â or faces the threat of harm â in some demonstrable way. House Republicans upset about an implementation delay canât simply go to court and argue to the judge, âWe donât like the president.â Theyâll need to show how theyâve been adversely affected by the delay itself. * Has a lawsuit like this ever worked before? No. * Remind me, whatâs the âemployer mandateâ? In practical terms, the policy name is a bit of misnomer â there is no actual âmandate,â per se. Under the ACA, businesses with 50 or more full-time employees are told they need to offer health care coverage to their employees, but those who choose not to offer coverage have to pay a fairly modest tax penalty. Under the status quo, following the executive action, that penalty wonât kick in, at the earliest, before 2016. * Whatâs the basis for the Republicansâ case? The law says the policy was supposed to be implemented by now, and Obama didnât implement it. Ergo, the argument goes, the administration unilaterally decided to ignore this part of the law. * If it was going to cause so much trouble, why did Obama delay it? Because it wasnât ready to be implemented. Small businesses urged the White House for more time, so Obama gave them more time. * Was that legal within executive authority? Weâll find out soon enough, but the administration has a fairly detailed defense. * Given how upset Republicans are, Obamaâs move must have been unprecedented. Actually, itâs not. When the Bush/Cheney administration was implementing Medicare Part D, officials used executive power to move implementation deadlines around in order to make the law work more effectively. No one cared â and certainly no one sued. * Do Republicans support the employer mandate? No, they vehemently oppose it. * Then Iâm confused. If Republicans didnât want the policy to be implemented, why are they filing a lawsuit complaining that the policy wasnât implemented? Remember, for GOP lawmakers, effective public policy wasnât part of the equation. The GOPâs priority was failure â they wanted the system not to work. If the employer mandate would have made life difficult for the private sector, then Republicans desperately wanted it to happen so that it would hurt the economy, anger the public, and make the ACA more unpopular, causing a political nightmare for the president. * So Boehner is suing because Obama isnât implementing Obamacare fast enough? Pretty much. * Politics aside, is this policy a good idea or a bad idea? Opinions vary, even among those who generally like the ACA. The fear is the mandate might discourage hiring, but the ACA extends all kinds of breaks to these employers to help subsidize the insurance and soften the blow of increased costs. * Did the delay deny coverage to a lot of people? Actually no. The vast majority of employers in this category (about 96%) already offer health insurance to their workers, and the delay didnât affect them at all. Whatâs more, the delay didnât affect the creation of the exchanges, which ultimately bridged the gap. * If these affected workers are going to get subsidized coverage through the exchanges anyway, why have the policy at all? Primarily because the employer mandate helps pay for the law. In fact, with the policy delayed, Obamacare will still reduce the deficit, but by about $4 billion less than previously estimated. Also note, the mandate was created to discourage employers that already provide coverage from dropping their employees and throwing workers into exchanges. * What happens if the Republicansâ lawsuit somehow prevails? Itâll depend on the details, of course, but the result might very well be the implementation of a policy Republicans donât like. Stay tuned.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 14:11:01 +0000
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