House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced Friday that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have sued President Barack Obama’s administration to contest “unilateral actions on the health care law that they say are abuses of the president’s executive authority,” the New York Times reports.
At issue is enforcement of two critical facets of the Affordable Care Act. The suit claims that the Obama administration unlawfully postponed a requirement that would have forced large employers to offer health care benefits to full-time employees or pay penalties, the Times report explains.
But Democrats are saying that this concern is “strange,” the Times notes, considering that Republicans don’t even support this provision of the law. “Republicans, they say, are attacking Mr. Obama for delaying enforcement of a law that they vehemently oppose,” according to the Times.
The second major part of the lawsuit focuses on “President Obama’s unlawful giveaway of roughly $175 billion to insurance companies under the law.” The payment was a subsidy that would “reduce the co-payments, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs that [low-income] consumers incur when they go to doctors and hospitals,” the Times reports.
House Republicans object because “the funds have not been appropriated by Congress,” the Times continued. “The lawsuit argues that it is an unlawful transfer of funds.”
Boehner issued a statement, saying, “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.”
He added, “The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action.”
Read more at the New York Times.