obama care was voted for by the house and put into place, and now to sue the president for an unstated amount-probably blank check ridiculous amount is a problem to me....
When a tort lawsuit is filed, although a monetary remedy is usually the result, there are actually others ways in which the suit can be resolved such as an injunction (a court order to prevent something from happening) or a specific performance (a court order to do something specific). Essentially the purpose of a tort lawsuit is that the plaintiff feels that the defendant damaged them in some way, and seek for a way to return them back to normal (this is known as restoring the victim to wholeness). In most cases the monetary remedy is the easiest way to accomplish this. Either the victim had property stolen from them, and so a return of that property will bring them back to wholeness, or else the victim was damaged in some other way in which the damage may be repaired by doing additional work (and having the defendant pay to recoup those repair costs). However there are cases where there isn't a real monetary figure that will bring the plaintiff to wholeness. Consider the case where a woman's ex is stalking her. In this case, the stalker is damaging the woman's sense of well-being and safety, both of which don't have a real monetary value that can be placed on the damage. In this case, the court will sign a restraining order, which is a form of injunction that prevents the ex from being within a certain radius of the woman. The strength behind these "Equitable Remedies" (non-monetary remedies to a tort) is that if they are broken again, it now becomes a legal matter and the person can receive criminal punishments instead of mere tort remedies.
Although the monetary remedies are the usual ones, in cases involving different elements of the government, it is usually the equitable remedies that are sought for in a lawsuit. So in this particular case, the Republicans in Congress are suing that the President has overstepped his power and assumed powers granted to the legislature by not following the letter of the law, specifically by extending the business mandates in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) out to 2015. Technically, the legislature writes the laws while the executive branch enforces the laws that were passed. So if the law that was passed has a particular date in which certain aspects are set to start or to expire, then only Congress should be able to change those dates. Thus with the President extending the time before the business mandates would start, he is in fact violating one of the founding separations of the branches of government. However, although the President is technically in the wrong by doing this, it isn't a completely new thing to have happened in our federal government; former President Bush also went beyond his executive powers when he extended the date of enrollment for Medicare Part D. So in that sense, I do think that this is just the Republicans making a mountain out of a molehill, at least in terms of how the President is overstepping his powers in executing the ACA.
This does suggest that there is an ulterior motive to the lawsuit than just getting the President to comply with the timetable set forth in the law (esp. when you consider that the Republicans were fighting to repeal the law not too long ago, and now are fighting to have it interpreted to the letter). Although the Republicans have said that this is not to impeach the president, it might still be used as a stepping stone in such a proceeding... In order for a person to be impeached, they must have committed a "high crime or misdemeanor". Thus when former President Clinton was impeached, it wasn't directly because of the affair with Monica Lewinsky but rather because he falsely testified in front of a grand jury as well as lying to a federal officer (an FBI agent). Similarly, President Obama cannot be impeached just because he made this minor extension to the time that the business mandate commences. However if this lawsuit results in an order for specific performance, then if the President again oversteps his power by either extending the mandate schedule again, or by doing something else that is outside of what the written law says to do, then the President might be seen as violating a court order which is a criminal offense and therefore could be considered enough for an actual impeachment. Also since there are some more radical Republicans (eg Sarah Palin) that want the President impeached no matter what, this may be a way to on the one hand pacify those fringes in their base party while on the other hand not get dragged into a lengthy impeachment process, esp. if that may end up back-firing and getting the rest of the voters upset that the Republicans are just impeaching the President for political gain as some pundits said was the result after Clinton's impeachment (as evidenced by the fall in Republican seat in Congress in the following mid-term elections which prompted Newt Gingrich to step down from his position as Speaker of the House).
Community Forum
Topic: republicans plan to sue the president (Read 938 times)
October 11, 2011, 08:08:28 pm