WASHINGTON — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann says House conservatives are preparing to sue President Barack Obama for executive overreach in response to his threats of unilateral action on a host of issues.
“He’s the president of the United States — he’s not a king,” the Republican lawmaker told reporters after Obama’s State of the Union address. “He may think he’s a king, he may declare himself king, but that’s not what he is under our Constitution.”
Bachmann said an effort is underway in Congress to take back their “authority under the Constitution as the House of Representatives.” She said the plan is to introduce legislation allowing lawmakers to hire an attorney, so “we can force the president to act under the Constitution.”
“We’ll sue the president of the United States and force him to no longer act unilaterally,” she said.
In his address at the Capitol Tuesday night, Obama said he plans to take unilateral action on the minimum wage for federal workers. He suggested he might go solo on guns, for example.
“I intend to keep trying, with or without Congress, to help stop more tragedies from visiting innocent Americans in our movie theaters, shopping malls, or schools like Sandy Hook,” he said.
Bachmann says Obama will have a fight ahead. “If he wants to go forward with his unilateral activity, he better be prepared for the lawsuit that the United States Congress will bring,” she said.
Asked by The Daily Caller for details about the legislation, a Bachmann aide pointed to the legislation introduced in December by South Carolina Republican Rep. Tom Rice. Text of that bill calls for “a civil action for declaratory or injunctive relief to challenge certain policies and actions taken by the executive branch.”
Bachmann said Obama has “acted unilaterally multiple times.”
“Obamacare is the passed law of the land and yet the president has changed Obamacare at least 17 times on his own, unilaterally, without going through the legislative action that he’s required to do under the United States Congress,” she said. “That’s just one. He also said that he would refuse to uphold the [Defense of Marriage Act], which he is required by law to uphold.”
“He’s done this multiple times and he’s also threatened — we can’t say we weren’t warned — he’s threatened us tonight that he’s going to act unilaterally,” Bachmann said after his speech.