On Tuesday morning, at a breakfast discussing the State of the Union address later in the evening, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters that President Obama is on dangerous ground on his use of executive orders. Essentially, Boehner issued a veiled threat stating that if the President thinks he can enact more change by circumventing Congress and utilizing executive orders, then Obama could be facing a backlash from Congressional Republicans. While he did not overtly state it, it seemed pretty clear he was talking about impeachment.
“We’re just not going to sit here and let the President trample all over us. This idea that he’s just going to go it alone, I have to remind him we do have a constitution. And the Congress writes the laws, and the President’s job is to execute the laws faithfully. And if he tries to ignore this he’s going to run into a brick wall.”
The new talking point among Republicans now seems to be that the President is mad with power and is looking to trample on the Constitution by ignoring Congress. Nevermind that the President is well within his rights to issue certain executive orders. Or that House Republicans have pretty much refused to work with the President since he was elected to his first term. It doesn’t matter. If the President has the audacity to try to get something done without the express written approval of the Party of No, then it is time for him to truly pay.
Also at the breakfast, Boehner made an embarrassing gaffe and said that he felt that the President’s executive order that was issued earlier in the day raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers would help nobody. After the meeting with reporters, Boehner’s aides had to clarify to the press that Boehner really meant that it would not help anyone right away, as this was only for new hires and would go into effect in 2015. Of course, it seems abundantly clear that House Republicans want nothing to do with raising the minimum wage for all workers anyway, so Boehner doesn’t really care if it helps anyone or not.
Later on in the day, Boehner took to Twitter to continue to push for what appears to be the real Republican ‘jobs bill.’ That’s right, the Keystone XL pipeline.
Pres. Obama wants this to be a “Year of Action.” He can start by focusing on trade, #KeystoneXL and dozens of House-passed bills #4jobs
— John Boehner (@johnboehner) January 28, 2014
Keystone: Why the wait? #TimeToBuild#4jobshttp://t.co/geB2TpPVya via @politico
— John Boehner (@johnboehner) January 28, 2014
It looks like 2014 will bring more of the same from the Republican Party. They will continue to obstruct the President at every angle. They will lob veiled and not-so-veiled threats at him. They will push for every single billionaire handout they can find. And they will continue to keep their collective feet on the necks of the lower and middle class. They just don;t know how else to act. Hopefully, the midterm elections of 2014 will be a huge wake-up call.
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