House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday, June 25, he will push a lawsuit forward to sue President Obama for not doing his job as the Constitution lays out. Boehner claims he does not intend to impeach the president.

“The Constitution makes it clear that a president’s job is to faithfully execute the laws,” Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “In my view, the president has not faithfully executed the laws.”

When asked which specific executive action, or actions, he would be challenging in court, Boehner replied, “When I make that decision, I’ll let you know.”

“Congress has its job to do and so does the president and when there’s conflicts like this between the legislative branch and the administrative branch, it’s in my view our responsibility to stand up for this institution in which we serve.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest asserted that Boehner’s lawsuit will not “consume the attention of the White House.”

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

“The fact that they are considering a taxpayer-funded lawsuit against the President of the United States for doing his job… is the kind of step that most Americans wouldn’t support,” Earnest said. He predicts that Boehner and supporters of the lawsuit will be met with negative backlash.

“I think what most Americans would say is they want their leaders in Washington, D.C., to make progress on behalf of the American people,” Earnest added.

Many believe it to be a frivolous lawsuit that is actually a move to draw attention away from Congress’s inability to pass a jobs bill, an energy bill, an education bill, or immigration reform.

“They’re doing nothing here, and so they have to give some aura of activity,” Pelosi, D-California told ABC News. “Whatever the subject happens to be of the week, you can just go on the Internet, and you can see what they’re screaming about there. You know there’ll be a reflection of it here.”

“President Obama has circumvented the Congress through executive action, creating his own laws and excusing himself from executing statutes he is sworn to enforce,” Boehner wrote in a memo.

The Washington Post provides a chart that shows that President Obama has written Executive Orders at a slower rate than every president since Grover Cleveland, who served his presidency in the 19th Century.

During his presidency, Obama has issued 182 Executive Orders, which is not on track to meet the 291 that George W. Bush wrote if compared within the same time period.

Because Boehner did not specifically say it was the Executive Orders that he takes issue with, but rather the “executive action” of the president, it is possible Boehner will focus on either Presidential Memoranda or generic executive action, according to an article in The Washington Post which entails instructions the president may dispel to government agencies.

Presidential Memoranda are very similar to the Executive Orders. A 1999 Congressional Research Service report compares the two as such:

“Both are undefined, written instruments by which the president directs, and governs actions by, government officials and agencies. They differ in that Executive Orders must be published in the Federal Register whereas Presidential Memoranda are similarly published only if the President determines that they have a ‘general applicability and legal effect.’”

President Obama has signed 383 Presidential Memoranda after five years and five months in office, according to the White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/presidential-memoranda Over 65 months, he has on average signed 5.9 memoranda per month.

President Bush signed 451 Presidential Memoranda during his presidency, according to The American Presidency Project. Over his 96 months in office, Bush averaged 4.7 Memoranda per month, which means at this rate Obama could surpass Bush in this area of executive action.

Because not all Memoranda is filed the same as Executive Orders, they are not necessarily as quantifiable to compare. Even harder to compare would be generic executive action. One such example would be the president drafting new regulations for the EPA and then the agency complying.

Because Boehner refused to comment on what all he intended to challenge, it is unclear if he and his constituents will even pursue these qualitative areas of executive action.

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