Now pay close attention.
The day after President Obama decided to act on immigration, Republicans went ahead and announced that they have filed a lawsuit against the president. The lawsuit does not deal with the president’s immigration order, but deals exclusively with healthcare and and the so-called “abuse of power” claim made against the president by Republicans.
In announcing the filing of the lawsuit, Republican House Speaker John Boehner inadvertently explained that President Obama has the authority to make the decisions he has made theough Executive orders. Speaking to Reporters, Boehner said;
“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite 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.”
John Boehner has been in politics for a long time and he is well aware that past presidents have taken the same executive measures to attempt to fix the immigration problem.
When both Reagan and George Bush used their executive authority for immigration reform, Republicans stayed quiet. No Republican, including the Speaker of the House, saw anything wrong and accepted the precedent set by these previous presidents, and understood that this precedent would be followed by future presidents. To quote Boehner, “future presidents will have the ability to as well.”
Well if it was accepted back then that future presidents would “have the ability” to follow set precedent, then clearly Obama, being a president, has that ability and is working within his constitutionally allowed boundaries. And John Boehner and his Republican block party have expected and accepted it as the norm.
