Boehner says Obama has sabotaged chance for a bipartisan immigration plan; files lawsuit

This story is by Katharina Fiedler from our Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON – House Speaker John Boehner charged that President Barack Obama “has chosen to deliberately sabotage” any chance that Congress will agree on a bipartisan package to overhaul the nation’s immigration system.

At a news conference Friday next to his Capitol Hill office, Boehner, R-West Chester Twp., pledged that the Republican-controlled House “will, in fact, act” in response to Obama’s decision Thursday to issue an executive order which would allow more than five million undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. for the next three years and to get a work permit.

“With this action, the president has chosen to deliberately sabotage any chance of enacting bipartisan reforms that he claims to seek,” Boehner said. “And, as I told the president yesterday, he’s damaging the presidency itself.”

“The president has taken actions that he himself has said are those of a ‘king’ or an ‘emperor’ – not an American president,” Boehner said. Boehner did not detail the House's the next steps but he said that the members are looking at the options.

He also warned “the action by the president yesterday will only encourage more people to come here illegally, and putting their lives at risk.”

Boehner said that “all year long, I warned the president that by taking unilateral action he was making it impossible to build the trust necessary to work together.”

The House, however, never took up the immigration bill supported by Obama and approved last year by the U.S. Senate.

Boehner’s news conference took place as House GOP lawmakers filed a lawsuit against Obama, charging that the administration has waived sections of the 2010 health law without getting congressional approval. Republicans have talked about filing a similar lawsuit against Obama for his immigration order.

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., denounced the lawsuit, saying in a statement that “House Republicans are wasting the taxpayers’ time and money on a partisan lawsuit against the president.” He urged Boehner to stop “this exercise in futility and frivolity.”

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