House Speaker Boehner unveils plan to sue Obama over delay of ACA employer mandate
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Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, has released a draft resolution to authorize the House of Representatives to sue President Barack Obama for regulatory action taken last year that delayed by one year a health care reform law provision requiring employers to offer coverage or be hit with a stiff fine.
“In 2013, the President unilaterally 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,” Rep. Boehner said in a statement Thursday.
“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,” Rep. Boehner added.
In response, the White House issued a statement saying, “It is disappointing that Speaker Boehner and congressional Republicans have decided to waste time and taxpayer dollars on a political stunt. … As the President said today, he is doing his job – lawsuit or not – and it's time Republicans in Congress did theirs."
At the time the delay was announced, the administration said more time was needed to simplify a requirement under which employers are to report health plan enrollment information to the government. That reporting form has yet to be released.
The delay to 2015 from 2014 in the employer mandate — under which employers are required to offer coverage or be hit with a $2,000 per-full-time-employee penalty — was followed by a second delay, which was announced earlier this year.
Under the second delay, employers with between 50 and 99 employees do not have to comply with the mandate until 2016. In addition, the requirement that coverage be offered to at least 95% of full-time employees will not kick in until 2016, with a 70% coverage offer requirement applying in 2015.
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