Tag Archives: executive authority

Obamacare is working, poll says

You can say many things about polls. Let’s try this: If you agree with a poll’s findings, you take those findings to heart; if you disagree with them, you dismiss the numbers as being cooked up, fabricated.

I’ll go with the former on the latest CNN poll on the Affordable Care Act.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-obamacare-working-cnn-109272.html?hp=r10

A new poll suggests that most Americans believe the ACA is working, if not for them personally, then for someone else.

Does that end the dispute over President Obama’s signature piece of domestic legislation? Hardly. It’s still going strong because critics want to keep the pot boiling.

House Speaker John Boehner says he’s going to sue the president over changes Obama made in the law that delayed the employer mandate provision in the ACA — which Boehner and other critics actually favor. Still, the speaker is mad because the president acted under his own executive authority.

Whatever.

The new poll, though, does bring to mind another political quandary for opponents of Obamacare. Do they really want to roll back a law that has provided health insurance for an estimated 9 million Americans that previously didn’t have it? Do they really and truly want to take back something the federal government has provided?

This is perhaps the stickiest issue facing ACA critics as they campaign for public office across the land.

We still keep hearing talk of attempting to repeal the act — with nothing to replace it. Congress has voted a bazillion times to repeal the ACA; it keeps coming up short. When will it end?

I’ll stick with my mantra that the Affordable Care Act is working. Yes, the rollout was tough, but it got fixed.

I also will suggest that the latest poll exposes Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit for being the frivolous legal action it is.

Boehner changes mind on executive orders

It still boggles my mind that John Boehner wants to sue the president of the United States for exercising his constitutional rights as the nation’s chief executive.

That is, the president has decided to issue executive orders — imagine that — to move projects forward.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/06/25/3453244/boehner-executive-order-suit/

Why, how dare he do that, says the speaker of the House of Representatives.

Well, as it’s been reported on the link attached to this post, it was just fine for President George W. Bush to use executive authority, but not President Barack Obama.

Obama has pulled out his executive signing pen fewer times than Bush ever did. He’s done far fewer times than many of his predecessors.

But that hasn’t dissuaded the speaker from taking the president to court in what many people think now is a stunt, a sop to the tea party wing of his Republican congressional caucus.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Boehner once declare that the tea party wing wasn’t to be taken seriously? Didn’t he incur their wrath when he said that?

The wrath must have gotten to the speaker, who’s now saying that the president has failed to carry out his duties “faithfully,” whatever that means.

Today, the Supreme Court stuck it to the president when it voted 9-0 in ruling that Obama’s recess appointments were improper. I get the court’s standing in reeling in the president’s executive authority in making these appointments while Congress is in recess.

I do not quite understand what in the world has riled the speaker enough to sue the president for doing what the Constitution says he is entitled to do.

Maybe the speaker will let us all in what he has in mind … in due course.