U.S. President Barack Obama speaks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington on July 29, 2014.MANUEL BALCE CENETA/The Associated Press
All but five members of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening voted to sue President Barack Obama for violating the Constitution. The President's crime: delaying the mandate in his sweeping 2010 health law that would have forced smaller companies to provide their workers with medical insurance.
Yes, you are reading that correctly. The Republican Party, champion of "job creators" and especially the smaller ones who form the backbone of the economies in the rural areas from where Republicans draw most of their support, is taking Mr. Obama to court over his decision to cave to a backlash from those same job creators.
Republicans complain the President and the Democratic majority in Congress forced Obamacare down their throats back in 2010. There's something to that complaint. Few Republicans voted for it, making one of the biggest health reforms in U.S. history a rather one-sided affair. (This will strike those of us used to the unbridled power of parliamentary majorities as normal, but in the U.S., there is a history of doing the big stuff with at least some support from the other side.)
Mr. Obama's backtracking on the employer mandate was a win for Republicans and their supporters. They could have used the intervening period to make the delay permanent, or use their political advantage to alter other aspects of Obamacare. But Republicans aren't in the mood to declare small victories or compromise or do anything that might be construed as contributing to a functioning government.
Speaker John Boehner has operated as a minority leader in the finest parliamentary tradition: He has opposed the majority at every turn, even when the majority's policies would benefit his constituents. The problem, of course, is that the United States isn't a parliamentary democracy. Minority parties in Canada make noise and are eventually steamrolled by the government. In the U.S., when one of the Senate, the House or the President decides to stonewall, all legislative activity stops.
Mr. Boehner held a vote on his lawsuit under the guise that a judge would take more seriously the lament of an entire branch of government than the complaint of one frustrated congressman. If it goes that way, that judge will be among the few people taking this latest example of Washington dysfunction seriously. News outlets largely had buried reports on the Wednesday vote by Thursday morning. There was no sign of the news among the top stories at the New York Times, nor was there any sign of it at Breitbart, a website popular with conservatives, where the most popular story was a piece of journalistic bear baiting under the headline: "Obama celebrates Muslim contributions to the USA."
At any other time in American history, a vote by the House of Representatives to sue the President of the United States of America for violating the Constitution would be a major event, even at a time when people in so many corners of the world are simultaneously tearing themselves apart.
Instead, Americans so have given up on Washington that political reporters – a group that rarely distinguishes itself for being in tune with their readers outside of Washington – have effectively ignored Mr. Boehner's suit.
That's because it is such a blatant political stunt that if defies serious treatment. Mr. Boehner is suing Mr. Obama because it will keep the Tea Party wing of his party motivated ahead of the November midterm elections. Not to be outdone, Democratic leaders and officials for days have been circulating e-mails claiming the Republicans are out to impeach the President. There's little to support that notion, yet presenting the possibility has helped the Democratic Party raise millions of dollars this week and should rally militants to join the campaign.
Mercifully, Congress was scheduled Thursday to take its summer recess. It may actually vote on correcting inexcusable problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs and on approving funding so national highway improvements can proceed for the rest of the summer. Left undone will be legislation to address the influx of children for Central America seeking refuge in the United States.
Those children are a reminder that the U.S. still is a desirable country. It just isn't being governed like one.