[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 5 (Thursday, January 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H114-H118]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             EMPLOYER MANDATE UNDER THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barr). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Rice) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that 
all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend 
their remarks and to include extraneous materials on the topic of my 
Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from South Carolina?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, back last summer when the 
President unilaterally announced that he was going to not enforce the 
employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act, I was quite surprised 
because the next day there was a news article in The New York Times 
about it. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin was quoted in the article. He 
was one of the architects of the Affordable Care Act. He said, speaking 
of the President: This was the law. How can he do that? How can the 
President simply unilaterally choose to ignore the law?
  Our Founders, Mr. Speaker, designed a system of government based upon 
a separation of powers. The legislative branch enacts the laws and the 
executive branch, the President, enforces those laws. They did that to 
protect our very, very fragile freedom. We cannot allow those 
separations to be eroded. One man who can both make the laws and 
enforce the laws is more a monarch than a President.
  Article II, section 3 of the Constitution requires, in part, that the 
President take care to faithfully execute the Nation's laws. In 1792, 
when George Washington was faced with enforcing an unpopular whiskey 
tax, he wrote in a letter that:

       It is my duty to see that these laws are executed. To 
     permit them to be trampled upon with impunity would be 
     repugnant to that duty.

  President Obama, on the other hand, has, throughout his 
administration, picked and chosen which laws or parts thereof he wishes 
to enforce. House Resolution 442 would require the House of 
Representatives to institute a lawsuit against the President to comply 
with this article II, section 3 of the Constitution. It lists four 
specific examples where the President has either failed to enforce the 
laws or has gone beyond the laws as written:
  One is the 1-year delay in the employer mandate under ObamaCare, 
which I mentioned earlier;
  Another is the 1-year extension of the substandard insurance 
policies, which by my definition is any insurance policy anybody would 
really want to buy;
  One is the waiving of the work requirements under the welfare laws; 
and
  One is the granting of deferred removal action to illegal aliens.
  Again, one man empowered to both enact the laws and enforce the laws 
is more a monarch than a President. This is not a Republican issue. 
This is not a Democrat issue. It is not a Tea Party action. This is not 
for messaging. H.R. 442 merely recognizes that no American, including 
the President, is above the law.
  What would we say if the next President came in and said, I don't 
like the Affordable Care Act and, therefore, I am not going to enforce 
the individual mandate, which would gut the law? What would we say if 
President Obama or any other President said, I think the top income tax 
rate is too high and, therefore, I am not going to enforce it, or I am 
not going to enforce the lowest income tax rate? What is the difference 
between those situations and what President Obama is doing right now 
not enforcing the employer mandate under ObamaCare? After all, the 
Supreme Court has ruled that the penalties under ObamaCare are a tax.
  What would we say if a President said, I am not going to enforce this 
tax against my friends but I will against my enemies, or I am not going 
to enforce it against my contributors but I will against everybody 
else? What is the difference between that situation and what the 
President has done granting 1,300 unilateral exemptions to different 
groups under the Affordable Care Act?
  If the President is allowed to make the law or to ignore those laws 
passed by Congress, Congress can just go home; there is no need for the 
legislative branch. In fact, when Congress, following the President's 
lead, when the House of Representatives passed a bill that would delay 
the employer mandate for a year, which the President had already 
announced he was going to do unilaterally, the President threatened to 
veto it.

                              {time}  1700

  At this time, I yield to Representative Martha Roby from Alabama.
  Mrs. ROBY. Thank you so much to my colleague from South Carolina. I 
just want to tell you that, as I travel throughout Alabama's Second 
District, the question I get over and over and over again is: What can 
we do about this executive overreach?
  So I rise, Mr. Speaker, today on behalf of the people of Alabama's 
Second Congressional District to lend my support to Mr. Rice's S.T.O.P. 
Resolution in order to stop this overreaching Presidency. I appreciate 
so much the diligent and thorough work of my colleague's on this 
resolution, and I am proud to sign on as a cosponsor.
  In advancing this resolution, we are seeking to finally stop 
constitutional overreaches by the executive branch and restore the 
separation of powers by bringing legal action against the Obama 
administration to compel the judiciary to rein it in. This resolution 
directs a civil action on behalf of the House of Representatives in 
Federal court in the District of Columbia, challenging four unilateral 
Obama administration actions, as have already been explained, that 
blatantly flout constitutional restraints on the executive branch. I am 
going to mention them again:
  Specifically, these include the lifting of the Affordable Care Act's 
mandated requirements on the type of insurance providers can offer; the 
1-year delay of the health care law's employer mandate; the adoption of 
a policy against deporting certain illegal immigrants, which is counter 
to U.S. immigration and naturalization laws; and the decision to waive 
the ``welfare to work'' laws.

[[Page H115]]

  Mr. Speaker, the Obama administration is certainly not the first 
administration to overstep its constitutional authority as, I would 
say, most Presidents in recent history have pushed the limits of 
executive power, but the actions taken in the last few years have been 
especially blatant and egregious. President Obama and his 
administration have recklessly stretched the scope of the executive 
branch, aggressively imposing by administrative rule or regulation what 
they can't achieve legislatively. When I am at home and am talking with 
my constituents about this, we talk particularly about the promulgation 
of rules. It is just a backdoor attempt to get done what the President 
can't get done here in the Congress.
  Amazingly, in some cases, the administration has moved to delay, 
tweak or to otherwise alter the very health care law he pushed to 
enact, all while dismissing legislative proposals that would have had 
the same effect but would have had the benefit of being legal because 
they would have gone through the Halls of Congress. If allowed to stand 
unchecked, such actions present a dangerous threat to our 
constitutional separation of powers.
  Mr. Speaker, I wish this weren't necessary. I wish President Obama 
and his administration had the self-restraint to act within their 
constitutional bounds, but this administration's pattern of 
aggressively overstepping its authorities to implement policy and win 
political battles leaves us no choice to act. Our constitutional 
restraints on government are not always convenient for political or 
policy goals, but they are necessary for preserving the checks and 
balances that ensure this government still derives its authority from 
the people and not the other way around.
  We know that working through the courts can take time, but the 
judicial branch has shown a greater willingness as of late to rein in 
these overreaches from the Obama administration. Two recent decisions 
that are worth noting have already struck down the Obama 
administration's attempts to flout the law and act outside of the 
constitutionally prescribed role of the executive branch.
  One was the lower court's ruling overturning the President's attempt 
to appoint NLRB members without Senate approval, and the other was a 
rare mandamus order from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that 
rejected the administration's attempt to simply not enforce laws 
related to Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste.
  Mr. Speaker, this S.T.O.P. Resolution allows the House of 
Representatives to seek the intervention of the judicial branch to rein 
in these executive abuses and reconstitute the separation of power. I 
hope it also sends a message to the Obama administration that this 
body, as one half of a coequal branch of the United States Government, 
is not going to stand by and watch the erosion of this country's 
constitutional framework.
  Again, a sincere thank you to my colleague from South Carolina for 
taking the lead on this, for showing leadership. I am proud to be able 
to state to the people of Alabama's Second District, when asked ``What 
are you doing about this?,'' that this S.T.O.P. Resolution is a step in 
the right direction. So thank you very much.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Thank you, Mrs. Roby.
  I yield to my friend and colleague from Utah (Mr. Stewart).
  Mr. STEWART. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend and colleague Tom 
Rice for introducing this important resolution. I am proud to stand in 
support of this, and I thank him for giving me a few minutes to discuss 
what is a very, very important issue today.
  My friend knows that I was a writer. Before I came to Congress, I 
wrote a number of books. I spent a lot of time writing about and 
studying this great Nation--about the history of this Nation, about the 
history of the world--and I think I know a little bit about some of 
these things. I think one of the most remarkable but underappreciated 
characteristics of General George Washington, who was, I think, a hero 
for many of us, was his deference to the Continental Congress during 
the American Revolution. Although in many cases he knew what needed to 
be done, he always recognized that he derived his authority--he derived 
all of his power--not from himself but from the Congress, and he 
understood that the Congress was the organization and the body that 
held the power and the keys to a successful government.
  It is a lesson, as we have been discussing here tonight, that, 
unfortunately, this President does not seem to appreciate or to even 
understand.
  Our Founding Fathers made it very clear in the Constitution that the 
responsibility of the President was to take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed--not selectively chosen, not preferred or some of 
them ignored, but faithfully executed. It is his constitutional 
responsibility, but time and time again, we have seen this President as 
he ignores this constitutionally mandated responsibility. He prefers to 
pick and to choose which laws he will enforce.
  I would like to quote eminent Judge Michael McConnell, who recently 
wrote:

       The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which 
     advises the President on legal and constitutional issues, has 
     repeatedly opined that the President may decline to enforce 
     laws he believes are unconstitutional, but these opinions 
     have always insisted that the President has no authority to 
     refuse to enforce a statute which he simply opposes for 
     policy reasons.

  This has become a very troubling trend for this President. As my 
friend has already pointed out, among other examples, he has already 
declined to enforce immigration laws against a large number of illegal 
immigrants. He has chosen not to enforce work requirements that 
Congress mandated as part of the 1990 welfare reform programs, programs 
which had broad bipartisan support and which everyone recognizes were 
very successful. He has chosen to change the congressional requirements 
that States must meet under No Child Left Behind, and in none of these 
cases did he say he believed the laws were unconstitutional. He simply 
disagreed with the policies and so refused to enforce those laws. Now, 
we may or may not agree with the President on the merits of these 
policies, but as an institution, Congress should be extraordinarily 
concerned that the President is usurping our role as legislators, and 
it is setting a very dangerous precedent.

  The President, for example, went to great lengths to convince the 
Supreme Court and other Americans that the Affordable Care Act was, 
indeed, constitutional. He won that battle, which means he should have 
to enforce this law that he argued was constitutional or, if not, come 
to Congress and ask for changes to the law, but over the last few 
months, we have seen numerous delays and exemptions to ObamaCare 
without any input at all from Congress. Now, once again, regardless of 
your views on the merits of ObamaCare, the President's actions should 
make everyone who respects the separation of power and the role of the 
executive very uncomfortable.
  Can you imagine if Governor Romney had been elected President and if, 
on his first day in office, he had said, ``I am going to delay the 
employer mandate''? Do you think any of my colleagues from across the 
aisle would have supported him in that? Imagine if he had said, again 
as was illustrated before, ``I think that the capital gains tax is too 
high. To get our economy going, I am just not going to enforce the 
capital gains tax for a year.'' I mean, if he had done that, heads 
would have exploded all over Washington, DC.
  Why would that have happened? He doesn't have the authority. The 
Constitution forbids it. We have a President, not a king. I don't want 
this President to act that way. I don't want a Republican President to 
act that way. Our Founding Fathers would be horrified if they were 
alive today and were watching what is happening with our Constitution 
and the growing power of the Presidency. This is dangerous, and it is 
demeaning to our democracy, and it simply must stop. I hope the 
President will remember his constitutionally mandated responsibility to 
enforce all laws, not just those laws that he chooses to enforce 
because he agrees with them.
  Mr. Rice, thank you, sir, for drawing attention to this very 
important issue. Thank you for giving me a few moments to share this 
with you here on the floor of the Congress.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Thank you, Mr. Stewart.
  I yield to my friend from Georgia (Mr. Woodall).

[[Page H116]]

  Mr. WOODALL. I thank my friend from South Carolina. I appreciate his 
making this time available.
  Mr. Speaker, truth be told, this is a leadership hour, so it tends to 
be Republicans down on the floor when it is a Republican leadership 
hour, and it tends to be Democrats down on the floor when it is a 
Democrat leadership hour, but as my friend Mr. Stewart said so well: 
this is not a Republican problem. This is not a President Barack Obama 
problem. This is a ``we, the people'' problem.
  The concern is not that it is President Barack Obama who is saying 
the Affordable Care Act doesn't have to be enforced. The concern is 
that any President could say that any law doesn't have to be enforced. 
Thomas Jefferson said you are not likely to lose your freedoms through 
rebellion; you are likely to lose them little by little by little by 
little. That is why we all have to stand up together.
  Mr. Rice is a freshman from South Carolina. I have only been here for 
two terms myself. I think about some of the giants of this institution, 
not just of the House but of the Senate as well. I think about one of 
my favorite Democratic Senators, Robert Byrd from West Virginia--a 
champion of article I of the Constitution. He was a Democrat second; he 
was an American first, defending the Constitution against Presidents, 
Republican and Democrat, who would take the people's power from Capitol 
Hill and take it down to the executive branch.
  So I want to ask you now--and it may sound frivolous--if we had 
President Mitt Romney in the White House today and if Mitt Romney were 
deciding the Affordable Care Act did not need to be enforced, would you 
still be here on the floor, asking that Congress go to court to reclaim 
congressional powers? I ask my friend.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. As you said, Representative Woodall, I am 
an American first and a Republican second, and if the President usurps 
the Constitution, I will call him to task.
  Mr. WOODALL. I confess to you that I went on the Oversight and 
Government Reform Committee--as all of my colleagues know, the 
Oversight and Government Reform Committee is responsible for doing all 
of the oversight over the executive branch--because I was certain Mitt 
Romney was going to win. I said, for far too long, power has been 
leaving the people's hands on Capitol Hill, gravitating down 
Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, and we in a Republican House 
will be able to do oversight over a Republican President and show the 
American people it is not about Republicans and Democrats; it is about 
article I and article II and about following the process, following the 
law, following the Constitution. It matters. It doesn't matter when 
times are good. It matters when things get dicey, when you begin to 
lose those freedoms little by little.

                              {time}  1715

  I want to ask my friend from South Carolina, because we went through 
this with recess appointments, whether or not there was the ability for 
the President to appoint folks of his choosing to various positions 
around the city. And what I read that D.C. court opinion to say is what 
President Obama has done is absolutely outrageous. It cannot possibly 
stand.
  But what Congress allowed President Bush to do and President Clinton 
to do and President Bush before him to do and President Reagan before 
him to do, that was also unconstitutional; and Congress has to step up 
for the powers of the Constitution entrusted in us.
  Is this your understanding?
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Representative Woodall, that is exactly 
what this resolution is intended to do. It is intended for Congress to 
take action to enforce the Constitution.
  Representative Woodall, do you hear from your constituents back home 
when you speak to them that the President is breaking the law, and why 
don't you do something about that?
  I do all the time. I think that is a result of the erosion of 
Congress' power--exactly what you are talking about.
  Mr. WOODALL. We should absolutely have arguments on this floor about 
how much money should be spent on this program versus that program, 
whether or not we should authorize a new issue or do away with an old 
issue. Those are those things that divide us.
  But we should be united, Republican, Democrat, House and Senate, over 
these constitutional issues of where does the people's power reside. 
Because if leaders like you, in the absence of Senator Byrd from West 
Virginia, in the absence of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in the absence of 
some of those greats who formerly preserved the people's power, I don't 
know how it gets preserved.
  I am certain that you face slings and arrows from folks thinking this 
is some sort of partisan stunt: you just don't like this President; you 
just have sour grapes over the last election.
  I have gotten to know you well over your very short time in Congress. 
It is so valuable to me that you put your responsibilities as an 
American first--far above your responsibilities as a Republican--and 
that despite those slings and arrows, the Constitution comes first. It 
may not seem like we need the Constitution to protect us each and every 
day; but when we wake up and realize it is not there, it is going to be 
too late.
  I hope this is something that spreads in a bipartisan way and in a 
bicameral way. We have preserved this Republic, this greatest form of 
government the world has ever known, only because folks have stood up 
when others did not see that necessity.
  We need this. There is the necessity today, and I am grateful to you 
for your leadership.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Thank you, my friend.
  I yield to my friend from Florida (Mr. Yoho).
  Mr. YOHO. I thank my good friend from South Carolina (Mr. Rice), for 
bringing this resolution forward and for his leadership. This is a very 
important issue not only today, but as Mr. Woodall pointed out here, 
also for the future of our Nation--a constitutional Republic, as you so 
eloquently put it.
  Article II, section 3 of the Constitution specifically requires that 
the President:

       Take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

  This does not allow the President to enforce the laws he likes and 
ignore the laws he doesn't. This clause compels the President to ensure 
that all agencies within his executive branch are carrying out the laws 
created by Congress, the people's arm of government.
  The current administration undermines this body on a near daily 
basis; and if it is allowed to continue to do so, as you pointed out, 
the balance of power will no longer exist. In fact, it is rapidly 
slipping away to one side of the balance scales. It is our duty as 
representatives of the American people to speak out about this. And if 
not us, who? And if not now, when?
  The delay of the employer mandate, the extension of the substandard 
insurance policies, and the grant of the deferred removal action to 
certain illegal immigrants are just but a few examples of the executive 
attempting to legislate without Congress.
  Luckily, the Framers instituted a system of checks and balances. This 
Congress has no choice but to turn to the courts. I offer my strong 
support for Congressman Rice's STOP resolution, H.R. 442, which will 
enable the House to bring a civil action against the executive branch 
and allow future legislators to hold the executive branch accountable.
  I think this is the crux of this and this is the important part of 
this. Because it is for all future Presidents. Again, we have to stand 
up and start defending our Constitution.
  This administration, like others before it, has no problem creating 
mandates for the American people, but cannot seem to follow the most 
important mandate of our Nation: the Constitution.
  If you look at this, this simple little book, it is not an epic in 
volume. You can see it. It is very thin. But yet it is an epic in 
ideology of what free men and free women can do, and they are held 
accountable with their government by this little red book.
  The importance of this issue cannot be overstated. We must address 
this now so that all future Presidents will know that they must abide 
by the Constitution. No President, past or present, Democrat or 
Republican, should ever be exempt from the duties laid out by our 
Founding Fathers.
  That is why I support Congressman Rice's STOP resolution, H.R. 442, 
and I

[[Page H117]]

urge all my colleagues, both Republicans and Democrats, to support this 
resolution for America and for our Constitution.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Thank you, Mr. Yoho.
  I yield to my friend from Florida (Mr. DeSantis).
  Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina.
  When we left in December to go back to our districts for the 
Christmas weekend, I got home and thought, Okay, the President is going 
to do something with ObamaCare as we get close to Christmas. You just 
know anytime you come up on a holiday, some news gets put out. July 3, 
leading into the 4th of July, was the employer mandate delay. The 
grandfather stunt was pulled leading into Thanksgiving.
  And sure enough, December 19, the Obama administration grants a 
``hardship exemption'' from the individual mandate tax penalty to those 
who have seen their plans canceled due to ObamaCare.
  I don't think any of those plans should have been canceled. I offered 
a bill here, and the House passed something similar, to essentially 
grandfather in those plans. The Federal Government shouldn't be forcing 
people out of plans they like. Certainly, things needed to be done 
there.
  But understand how unfair this is. If you had insurance and your 
policy is canceled, and then the ObamaCare replacements are not 
affordable for you, they are saying, Okay, you are fine. No penalty for 
you. But if you are somebody who couldn't have afforded insurance the 
prior year, and now you are told you are forced to go on these 
ObamaCare exchanges, you still have to pay the tax, even though you may 
have been worse off than some of those other folks.

  Or if you are somebody that had employer coverage last year, and now 
maybe going out on your own and you need to buy individual insurance, 
if you end up in the exchanges and you don't find those affordable to 
you, you don't get the same relief.
  When you are talking about arbitrary delays like this, it is 
inherently unfair.
  Now, give the administration some credit. Unlike some of the other 
delays, there is actually a provision in ObamaCare that says people can 
qualify for a hardship exemption from the individual mandate. The 
problem is that in this instance it is ObamaCare itself that 
constitutes the hardship.
  So because ObamaCare is implemented, these people are suffering a 
hardship. Therefore they are exempt from the statute. To me, I think 
that is an abuse of what the statute is supposed to do. Certainly, it 
begs the question, Could you simply delay or grant a suspension of all 
of these provisions of ObamaCare?
  It is interesting because I was reading in the Weekly Standard 
publication, one of the reporters was asking members of the Senate what 
are their limits, what is the principled justification for his conduct.
  And so the reporter asked one Senator:

       How do you determine if the President couldn't do something 
     that it does exceed his authority? Are there any parts of the 
     law that the President does not have the authority to delay 
     or suspend?

  The Senator's response--a Democratic Senator:

       I don't know. I'm not the scholar on that.

  Well, the reporter went to another Democratic Senator and said:

       Are there are any delays the President wouldn't have the 
     authority to make? Could the President potentially suspend 
     the entire law if he wanted to?

  His answer:

       I can't answer a hypothetical.

  The reporter asked again:

       So you can't say if there are any parts of the law he 
     couldn't delay unilaterally?

  The Senator said:

       I can't answer a hypothetical.

  Finally, another Senator told the reporter he doesn't know of any 
legal impediment preventing the executive branch from delaying the 
employer or individual mandates.
  When asked:

       Couldn't a future President just simply come in and suspend 
     the entire law?

  That Senator said:

       I don't want to speculate what a future President might do.

  And so I think those answers, when Senators and the President's own 
party cannot offer any principled justification for the President's 
conduct that would exclude the potential of a President simply delaying 
all provisions of the law, you know that you are not in the realm of 
faithful execution of the law.
  I think it is a challenge. We have talked about it in this Chamber in 
hours like this. We have had hearings in the Judiciary Committee with 
experts--even liberal constitutional law experts--saying that this 
conduct goes beyond what the Founding Fathers intended and what the 
Constitution envisioned.
  I would like to see somebody offer a principled justification for the 
President picking and choosing which parts of the law should be 
enforced and should not be enforced, should be delayed, should be 
suspended, or should be ignored.
  It is interesting, because when you go back and look at the Founding 
Fathers when they created the Constitution, when they created the 
Congress, when they created the executive, at the convention James 
Wilson from Pennsylvania was the one who moved to create a President 
consisting of a single person. And that caused silence in the 
convention hall because they had just rebelled against Britain. And 
although you needed some type of executive power, there were some who 
were a little bit taken aback that you would even have a single 
President, even in a constitutional system. Some of the people said at 
the time that you can't really have a strong President and have a 
republic.
  So this was a huge issue for the Founding Fathers. Clearly, it would 
not have been acceptable to stand up at the Constitutional Convention 
and say, Yes, the President is going to have the authority and duty to 
enforce the laws; but if there are laws he doesn't like, he will be 
able to delay provisions or ignore provisions as he sees fit, as long 
as it is consistent with his overall purpose or political agenda. That 
would not have been acceptable to anybody at the time.
  Can you imagine if when John Adams succeeded George Washington, he 
just started delaying provisions related to the bank of the United 
States or the Jay Treaty? Imagine when Jefferson came in. He ran 
against the Alien and Sedition Act. Some of those were just allowed to 
expire, but they went in and repealed a core portion of the Alien and 
Sedition Act. They didn't just ignore it. The provisions that expired, 
expired; and then they repealed the provisions that were still in 
effect.
  That is the way it is supposed to be done. They would never have 
allowed John Adams or Jefferson to come in and just willy-nilly enforce 
what they wanted to and not enforce what they didn't want to.
  And so part of the frustration of this is Congress is supposed to 
stand up for its authority. I think the House people here realize that 
what the President is doing is not proper constitutional government, 
but the U.S. Senate is just totally out to lunch on this. They are not 
interested in safeguarding their institutional prerogatives, because 
they are putting their political interests ahead of the legislative 
body's authority. That really runs contrary to how the Founders 
envisioned the separation of powers and checks and balances working.
  In Federalist 51 Madison said:

       Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

  What he meant by that is that, yes, you have separate powers. You 
have an executive, a legislative, and a judicial power. But just 
because you separate them doesn't mean that individual liberties can be 
secure.
  So you have got to give each branch the ability to check the other 
branches. And they were sure they knew people would have different 
partisan allegiances and all that, but they were pretty sure that each 
branch would have the wherewithal and would want to defend its own 
prerogatives.
  And so in this instance, I think what you don't have is a Senate that 
is willing to join with the House, use the power of the purse, use the 
appointment power, advise and consent, all the powers that we have, use 
those until the President starts conforming with the law.

[[Page H118]]

                              {time}  1730

  But we are not there yet. And so this idea of trying to bring this in 
front of courts, we shouldn't have to do that. We should be able to 
defend our own turf. But it is frustrating because we don't have a lot 
of other options at this point.
  So I think that my colleague from South Carolina, you know, I give 
him credit for thinking of what can we actually do that could 
potentially be successful. And so I am hoping that this move will be 
successful.
  But I think, going forward--and this has been a problem before this 
President. He is not the only one who has pulled stunts like this, 
although I think he has gone beyond what any previous President has 
done.
  Ultimately, people in this body and in the other Chamber have got to 
get serious about defending our constitutional responsibility. That 
means holding Presidents accountable who are not in accordance with 
article II, section 3, the ``Take Care'' clause. But it also means not 
delegating so much legislative authority to these bureaucracies when 
they end up essentially legislating, and those rules are imposed on the 
public without Congress saying anything at all about it.
  So, ultimately, the courts cannot save us if we aren't willing to 
save ourselves and protect the authority that the Constitution grants 
us and that we are supposed to exercise on behalf of the people that we 
represent.
  We are, especially in this House, we are the people's House. The 
President gets elected, too, but we are the closest to the people, and 
I think we have got to do a better job of this going forward.
  So I would just tell my friend from South Carolina, Thank you for 
doing this. I know you have signed on. I have a resolution just to say 
that the House doesn't approve of this conduct, because I fear if we 
don't do anything, then we are basically setting a precedent where this 
is going to be unquestioned going forward.
  So I think as much as we can do, even if we are not successful, at 
least we are showing people that we think this is a contested practice, 
and we are not willing to allow this to become something that is 
accepted for future Presidents, Republican or Democrat.
  Mr. RICE of South Carolina. I thank my friend from Florida.
  Separation of powers is fundamental to our form of government. The 
Congress enacts laws. The President enforces the laws. One individual 
who can both make the law and enforce it is more a monarch than a 
President.
  Without the separation of powers, our form of government crumbles. As 
earlier speakers said, the erosion of the separation of powers didn't 
start with President Obama, but it has certainly accelerated. At home I 
am asked all the time, The President is breaking the law; why don't you 
do something about it? This resolution is an attempt to do exactly 
that.
  Nobody would argue that the President has no discretion in enforcing 
the law. Clearly, he does. But in these four instances, he has clearly 
overstepped that discretion.
  I fall back to say, what would we say if the President has the power 
to waive these things, the employer mandate, the penalty under the 
employer mandate, that is a waiver of a tax? What would we say if the 
next President waived the capital gains tax, or waived the maximum 
bracket under the income tax, or waived the income tax for his friends?
  Clearly, that is beyond the discretion of the President. Clearly, 
President Obama has gone beyond his discretion, and Congress needs to 
enforce the Constitution.
  We have 44 cosponsors to our bill so far, but we need the help of the 
American people. We need you to talk to your Representatives. If you 
need more information about our resolution or what you can do, please 
go to my Web site at www.rice.house.gov.
 Thank you for your concern. Thank you for viewing. Let's protect our 
democracy.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members must address their remarks to the 
Chair and not to a perceived viewing audience.

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