In the tiny House Rules Committee room in Congress on Wednesday, New York Democrat Louise Slaughter let roll her grievances against House Republicans lawsuit against Barack Obama. It took a lot of coffee. The suit, which sues the president for unilaterally changing a core provision of ObamaCare, is a political stunt, declared Ms. Slaughter. Republicans have timed it to peak . . . right as the midterm elections are happening, said the ranking Rules member. Having failed to stop ObamaCare, they have chosen to run to the judicial branch. And, she lectured, a lawsuit against the president brought by half of the Congress is certainly not the correct way to resolve a political dispute. As for the legal merits, well! Ms. Slaughter feted her witness, lawyer Walter Dellinger, praising his work on Raines v. Byrd , a 1997 case in which the Supreme Court found members of Congress do not have automatic standing to sue. The courts, she insisted, had no business settling such disputes. A lawsuit against the president, she declared, is preposterous. About the only thing Ms. Slaughter didnt do in five hours was offer House Speaker John Boehner her litigation notes. For it seems to have slipped Ms. Slaughters mind—and the presss attention—that a mere eight years ago she was a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by congressional Democrats against George W. Bush. The year was 2006, just as Democrats were, uh, peaking in their campaign to take back the House. Democrats were sore that theyd lost a fight over a budget bill that made cuts to Medicaid and student loans. They dredged up a technical mistake—a tiny difference between the House and Senate version of the bill. Michigan Democrat John Conyers, ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, decided to (how did Ms. Slaughter put it?) file a lawsuit against the president brought by half of the Congress. He was joined as a plaintiff by nearly every other then-ranking Democratic member and titan in the House— Charles Rangel, John Dingell, George Miller, Collin Peterson, Bennie Thompson, Barney Frank, Pete Stark, James Oberstar and Ms. Slaughter herself. Rep. Louise Slaughter at Wednesdays House Rules Committee hearing. Win McNamee/Getty Images In an April 2006 Huffington Post piece titled Taking the President to Court, Mr. Conyers explained that he was alarmed by the erosion of our constitutional form of government, and by a president who shrugged about the law. After consulting with some of the foremost constitutional experts in the nation, he had determined that there was one group of people who were injured by Mr. Bushs lack of respect for checks and balances: Congress. So he was going—or as Ms. Slaughter might put it, running—to court. The plaintiffs—including Ms. Slaughter—meanwhile filed briefs explaining why Raines v. Byrd (her Dellinger special) should be no bar to granting them standing. They chided the defendants for omitting any mention of Coleman v. Miller, a 1939 case in which the Supreme Court did grant standing to members of a legislature to sue. By Wednesday, it was Ms. Slaughter who was omitting any mention that any such decision ever existed. Then again, there was so much that escaped Democrats minds at that hearing. Not one of those present, for instance, recalled that only two years ago, four of their House colleagues filed suit against Vice President Joe Biden (in his capacity as head of the Senate) challenging as unconstitutional the filibuster. Or that Democratic legislators also filed lawsuits claiming standing in 2011, and in 2007, and in 2006, and in 2002 and in 2001 and . . . It was left to Florida International University law professor Elizabeth Price Foley, another witness, to remind Democrats that in fact no fewer than 44 lawsuits in which legislators sought standing had been filed in federal court since Coleman v. Miller. Of the 41 filed by plaintiffs with unified political affiliation, nearly 70% were brought by Democrats. At least 20 of those came since 2000. The GOP might thank Ms. Slaughter for the idea. Save one crucial difference. It was also left to Ms. Foley to explain that the reason most of these prior cases had failed is because most were, in fact—again, in Ms. Slaughters words—political stunts. The majority, including the Slaughter case, were brought by ad hoc groups of legislators, sore over a lost political battle, complaining to courts. The judiciary wasnt much impressed. By contrast—and by far the more notable aspect of the five long hours of the hearing—is the care the Boehner team is putting into its own suit. While Democrats used Wednesday to score political points, Republicans used it to grill their expert witnesses on case law and constitutional questions. Mr. Boehners decisions to have the House as a whole vote to authorize the suit, and to narrowly tailor it around a specific presidential transgression (and one that no private litigant would ever have standing to protest), are designed to make this a far different and better breed of a court case. Its precisely because Democrats know how good a point Republicans have about Obama unilateralism that they are already working to dismiss the suit as political. And to do that, Ms. Slaughter must have us forget that up until, oh, two weeks ago, Democrats were all about asking the courts to vindicate Congresss prerogatives. How times change. Write to kim@wsj. online.wsj/articles/kimberley-a-strassel-the-boehner-bashers-track-record-1405638097?cb=logged0.7286387281492352
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 12:59:22 +0000
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