Let’s hear it for House lawsuits

The U.S. House has finally filed its long-threatened lawsuit against the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

And several of the more conservative Republicans in the House are also advocating filing suit against Obama over his announcement that he will take action to shield some 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

It’s about time.

Right-wing Republicans have claimed for months, maybe years, that President Obama cavalierly violates the Rule of Law. They cite particularly health care and immigration.

Now, at least with health care, they’ve decided to take him to court. Some of them may do so on immigration as well.

The courts are a proper venue to decide the legitimacy of their claims. That’s how the American system is designed to work, when negotiation and compromise fall short.

The Obamacare lawsuit has some weird angles. Obama decided to delay enforcement of requirements that some businesses either offer health care coverage to their employees or pay a penalty.

Republican opponents of Obamacare had been complaining about those requirements for a long time. But when Obama delayed their implementation, the Republican House decided to sue, claiming that the delays are illegal.

The other claim in the lawsuit is that while Obamacare authorized the government to pay back insurance companies for discounts they had to grant to law-income enrollees, Congress never appropriated funds to make those payments.

It isn’t the first time the courts have been asked to decide the legality of Obamacare.

An earlier lawsuit went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 in favor of the law as a legitimate exercise of Congress’ taxing power, except for the requirement that states had to provide Medicaid for all their eligible residents. So some states under Republican control, but not all, chose to deny their poorer citizens health care protection under Medicaid, leaving them uninsured.

Obama’s immigration proposal frees up, at least temporarily, undocumented parents of children born in this country from the threat of deportation.

Children born in the U.S. are U.S. citizens under the Constitution; deporting their parents would split up families, if the parents chose to leave their U.S. citizen children in the U.S.

If Obama’s delay of implementation of the play-or-pay requirement for businesses to provide employee health care insurance is illegal, businesses need to know it. The lawsuit will accomplish that. And both the administration and Congress will have to abide by the court decision.

The same benefit would derive from a congressional lawsuit on immigration. The right-wing mantra that Obama flouts “the Rule of Law” deserves an official airing in court.

If millions of undocumented immigrants are to be deported, and their families broken up by government action, they need to know it.

The whole immigration question would be made moot, of course, if House Speaker Boehner would bring the bipartisan Senate bill up for a vote in the House.

The Senate passed the bill by a 2-to-1 margin a year and a half ago, and bean-counters say that it would also pass in the House if it came to the floor.

But Boehner refuses to put it on the House calendar, nor in fact to take a vote on any immigration bill at all.

It takes nerve to bottle up the issue while at the same time condemning the administration for trying to move the issue. He’s stiffing both the Senate and the executive branch.

So bring on an immigration lawsuit. Let’s see what the courts say about it.

Or else try impeachment. Put up or shut up.

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