Rep. Miller Joins in Support of "STOP" Resolution

Statement

U.S. Representative Candice Miller (MI-10) today released the following statement regarding her co-sponsorship of the Stop This Overreaching Presidency (STOP), H.Res. 442. This resolution seeks legal action against the President of the United States for ignoring our country's laws. Miller said:

"Article 1, Section 1 of the Constitution establishes, "All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.' With regard to the execution of laws passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution puts the following admonition on the President, "he shall take care to that the laws be faithfully executed.' These two sections of our Constitution are the foundation of our democracy and make clear that in America we have no king who may rule by fiat. Laws may only be created when passed by the people's representatives in Congress and the President then is required to faithfully execute those laws.

"Far too often this President has chosen to either simply ignore the law, or create laws that have not been passed by Congress outside the bounds of our constitutional framework. Recently, 11 State Attorneys General, including Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, filed suit in federal court demanding that President Obama fulfill his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law. Those same Attorneys General have suggested that this action is necessary because individual members of Congress do not have appropriate standing in federal court to bring such a suit. While that may be true for individual members, other legal scholars have stated that an entire House of Congress would have such standing. That is why I have co-sponsored H.Res. 442, The STOP Resolution, which directs the House of Representatives to institute legal action to require the President to comply with the law.

"This legal action would focus on several laws where I believe the President's actions have been contrary to his responsibility to faithfully execute the law or made changes to laws without the approval of Congress.

"One such action was to allow insurance companies to continue selling insurance policies that are outside the bounds of ObamaCare simply because following the law became politically inconvenient. During the debate and since the passage of ObamaCare, the President continually promised the American people that if they liked their health care policy that they could keep it, but that promise was simply untrue based on the content of the legislation passed by Congress and that he signed. When the House debated and passed a bill which would have legally granted this authority to the President, he said it was unnecessary and threatened a veto. The Senate has taken no action on the legislation that was passed by the House.

"Another presidential action sited in this resolution is the granting of a one year delay in the enforcement of the employer mandate in ObamaCare. The President simply had no legal or constitutional authority to grant such a delay in the law. Once again when the House passed a bill which would have legally delayed the employer mandate for one year along with a similar one year delay for the individual mandate which requires every American to comply with ObamaCare the President threatened to veto the bill. Instead, he took the extra legal action to simply delay the mandate on employers while denying the same relief for every American. The Senate has once again failed to take action on the legislation passed by the House.

"We are a nation of laws and it is incumbent upon every American to faithfully abide by the law, and high elected officials of this nation are no different. I believe this legal action is needed to show that nobody in this nation is above the law and because of recent statements by the President that he intends to take additional action on issues when he cannot win the support of Congress. I hope that the House will promptly consider this resolution or take other appropriate action to reaffirm that in America the people still rule through their elected representatives under our constitutional framework."

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