House GOP votes to approve the TanMan’s frivolous lawsuit against the president

Last month I posted Approval of Congress at an ‘historic low,’ and yet . . .

Gallup released a new poll on Thursday revealing that only seven percent of Americans have any real confidence in Congress, an historic low. Congress’s ‘historically’ low approval ratings are abusing the word ‘historic’.

The 113th Congress will be the least productive in history. Yes, President Obama is right. The 113th Congress will be the least productive in history.

What Senate Tea-Publicans do not obstruct with the greatest abuse of the Senate filibuster rules in American history, the weakest Speaker of the House in modern American history, John Boehner, the consensus “Worst. Speaker. Ever.” fails to bring up for a vote in the House. This is the less-than-less-than-do-nothing 113th Congress — managing to exceed the previous less-than-do-nothing 112th Congress in lack of productivity.

If you owned a business and these people worked for you, you would not hesitate to fire them.

But the the less-than-less-than-do-nothing 113th Congress, the “Worst. Congress. Ever.” today voted to sue the president on the grounds that he too must do nothing. The anti-government insurrectionists of the Tea-Publican Party have declared war on our democracy and the Constitution.

The Hill reports, House votes to sue Obama:

The House voted Wednesday to rebuke President Obama by passing a resolution authorizing a lawsuit against his use of executive power.

The 225-201 vote fell along party lines, with five Republicans voting against the measure. No Democrats supported it.

* * *

In the last week, lawmakers have been riled up by reports that immigration advocates and Democrats are pushing the administration to take additional executive actions to give more immigrants legal status.

Republicans have been particularly angry over Obama’s decision to ignore several deadlines in the Affordable Care Act and his decision to defer the deportation of certain young people who illegally immigrated to the United States as children.

The lawsuit focuses on Obama’s decision to delay the healthcare law’s employer mandate, which requires employers with 50 or more workers to provide insurance coverage. The mandate was slated to originally take effect this year, but it has been pushed back for gradual implementation in 2015 and 2016.

House Republicans wanted to delay the ACA deadlines and voted to delay the deadlines last year. They are suing the president for doing exactly what they wanted him to do. And it is exactly the same thing that the Bush administration did in delaying the deadlines for the implementation of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit program, to which no Republican objected. IOKIYAR.

Rather than seeking to impeach Obama, however, GOP leaders in the House rallied around the lawsuit as a way of bottling up grassroots anger that would not backfire on Republicans in an election year.

And Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has insisted he has no intention of moving an impeachment measure.

Boehner’s words have hardly been enough assurance for Democratic leaders, however, who said after Wednesday’s vote that the lawsuit is just the first step toward the GOP’s ultimate goal: the impeachment of Obama.

“This isn’t about this lawsuit. You don’t sue somebody unless you want to prove that they are wrong,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said during a press briefing in the Capitol. “This is about the road to impeachment. And if it is not, the Speaker has to say one simple sentence: ‘Impeachment is off the table.’

“That’s what I had to say in 2007,” Pelosi added, referring to her Speakership under President George W. Bush. “That’s what Speaker Boehner should be saying now.”

GOP leaders have bad memories of the impeachment trial of President Clinton, which helped Democrats gain congressional seats in the 1998 elections.

* * *

Democrats have used the lawsuit to their advantage to boost fundraising ahead of the midterm elections. They have fundraised not only on the lawsuit, but on the idea that House Republicans actually want to impeach Obama.

“I wish I could say this was politics at its worst. But I have heard too many in the Republican majority raise the specter of impeachment,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

* * *

Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.), one of the five Republicans to oppose the lawsuit resolution, said the House should go further and initiate impeachment proceedings.

“Why not impeach instead of wasting $1 million to $2 million of the taxpayers’ money? … If you’re serious about this, use what the founders of the Constitution gave us,” Jones told The Hill.

Besides Jones, Paul Broun (Ga.), Scott Garrett (N.J.), Thomas Massie (Ky.) and Steve Stockman (Texas) opposed the measure.

Several House Republicans have said Obama deserves to be impeached, including Louie Gohmert (Texas), Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Randy Weber (Texas), Kerry Bentivolio (Mich.) and Stockman.

“We’ll wait until after November and see what happens, see what the American people do with their votes,” Weber said.

* * *

It is unclear how much the lawsuit will cost. House Administration Committee Chairwoman Candice Miller (R-Mich.) said during floor debate that Republicans “don’t know yet” because contracts haven’t been finalized and the length of the litigation is unknown.

Democrats called on the GOP to provide an estimate of how much taxpayer money will be spent on moving the lawsuit through the judicial system.

“Cost is not a hypothetical question, because there are real consequences for this country,” said Rep. Louise Slaughter (N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.

That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionists of the Tea-Publican Party are going to piss away your tax dollars on a partisan frivolous lawsuit that should be dismissed out of court on numerous grounds. The post-policy nihilism of the GOP has sunk to a new depth of doing nothing but creating talking points for the conservative media entertainment complex.

You have the power in your hands to stop this insanity. You can vote every Tea-Publican member of Congress out of office to hold them accountable for their actions. You can fire these employees who have failed you so miserably.