Goodlatte Statement at Hearing on “Executive Overreach in Domestic Affairs Part 1 – Health Care and Immigration”

Chairman Goodlatte: Thank you, Chairman King, for convening this second hearing of the Task Force on Executive Overreach.  The topic today includes recent case studies of the abuse of executive power, and I’ll focus my remarks on the President’s recent actions regarding the implementation of his own Obamacare law. The witness invited by the minority to the Task Force’s last hearing based his testimony around the proposition that the most “pernicious” violations of the separation of powers involve a President’s – quote -- “inappropriate claim of indefeasible power, where even the most unambiguous legislative mandates may go unenforced.” With that in mind, consider that in the Obamacare statute, Congress provided for clear statutory deadlines for compliance, including this one regarding the mandates the statute imposes on employers – quote -- “[t]he amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013.”  Few provisions in statutory law could be clearer than a deadline citing a date on the calendar. Yet the current Administration has unilaterally sought to rewrite the law, not by working with the People’s duly elected representatives, but in the following ways.  Through blog posts, which stated the Administration’s unilateral removal of penalties for employers who would otherwise be required to provide insurance coverage for their employees; through regulatory “fact sheets” which create an entirely new category of businesses and exempts them from their responsibility under the law; and through letters, which specifically cite the fact that people are having their health insurance terminated under Obamacare -- in violation of the President’s promise that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it -- and then claim to suspend the law’s insurance requirements to a date uncertain.  One letter alone suspended the application of eight key provisions of Obamacare, namely those requiring fair health insurance premiums; guaranteeing the availability of coverage; guaranteeing renewable coverage; prohibiting exclusions for preexisting conditions; prohibiting discrimination based on health status; and many others. And why was this done?  To delay the terrible consequences of Obamacare until after the next election.  As this headline from The Hill newspaper announced, “New Obamacare delay to help midterm Dems: Move will avoid cancellation wave before Election Day.”  And as the Washington Post described the situation, “White House delayed enacting rules ahead of 2012 election to avoid controversy.” The liberal Washington Post also weighed in on the subject, stating in a board editorial: “[T]he administration is unilaterally making distinctions between large businesses and medium ones; the latter group, which will get hit hardest and scream loudest when the employer mandate kicks in, will be treated more leniently. The law is also explicit that the government should be enforcing penalties already; that’s the plainest interpretation of Congress’s intent. The administration shouldn’t dismiss that without exceptionally good reason. Fear of a midterm shellacking doesn’t qualify as good reason.” University of Michigan Law Professor Nicholas Bagley, who generally supports Obamacare, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the Administration had encouraged – quote -- “a large portion of the regulated population to violate a statute in the service of broader policy goals” and had adopted a theory that would – quote -- “mark a major shift of constitutional power away from Congress, which makes the laws, and toward the President, who is supposed to enforce them.” As one of our witnesses today will more fully explain, this Administration has even unconstitutionally used federal funds that were not appropriated by Congress to subsidize insurance companies.  The Administration requested such appropriations, which were denied by Congress.  Yet the Administration used the unappropriated funds anyway – willfully, unilaterally, and unconstitutionally. I was one of the authors of the House Resolution authorizing a lawsuit on behalf of the House itself against the Administration for the abuse of executive power in the implementation of Obamacare.  And last year, a federal judge held the following: “Neither the President nor his officers can authorize appropriations; the assent of the House of Representatives is required before any public monies are spent.  Congress’s power of the purse is the ultimate check on the otherwise unbounded power of the Executive … The genius of our Framers was to limit the Executive’s power ‘by a valid reservation of congressional control over funds in the Treasury.’ . . . Disregard for that reservation works a grievous harm on the House, which is deprived of its rightful and necessary place under our Constitution.  The House has standing to redress that injury in federal court.” As that case proceeds, the House has an independent duty to pursue other responses to executive overreach that are within its legislative powers.  And to that end, I look forward to hearing from all our witnesses today.