House Republicans plan to sue President Barack Obama over the sweeping health care law he championed.
Speaker John Boehner said the suit will follow the argument Obama violated the Constitution by circumventing Congress and changing the law’s employer mandate on his own.
“In 2013, the President changed the health care law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it,” Boehner said in a statement.
“That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work. No president should have the power to make laws on his or her own,” he added.
The Republican-led House is expected to vote on a resolution authorizing legal action against the President at month’s end.
Boehner said previously he planned to sue Obama over his use of executive action. Republicans claim he has abused his authority at the expense of the legislative process.
So far, the House has passed two bills aimed at curbing executive orders. Neither has gone anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The health care law, better known as Obamacare, has been a political flashpoint between Republicans and the President since it’s passage in 2010 with no GOP support.
The House has approved dozens of bills aiming to weaken or repeal the statute that seeks to provide insurance coverage to millions of Americans without it.
The Obama administration a year ago postponed a requirement that businesses with more than 50 workers provide their employees with health insurance. The employer mandate now won’t take effect until 2015.
Bills had been introduced in the House to delay the requirement, which would have required debate and possibly opening the law to other changes just as the administration was gearing up to put the law into practice. That occurred in October.
