Reid: Judge Judy would toss Obama lawsuit in ‘half a second’

Television’s Judge Judy would throw out the “sham” Republican lawsuit against President Obama “in half a second,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Monday.

“Republicans have made a decision on a lawsuit against President Obama. It’s difficult to understand how desperate they have become,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

{mosads}“If a show trial is what House Republicans want, they should go talk to Judge Judy. I think even she would throw this case out in half a second,” he said.

Led by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), House Republicans are planning to sue President Obama for delaying the employer mandate in ObamaCare. They say the delay of the mandate was a blatant violation of the healthcare statute and an example of Obama exceeding the boundaries of presidential power.

“The president changed the healthcare law without a vote of Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the employer mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it,” Boehner said last week. “That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work. No president should have the power to make laws on his or her own.”

Under the healthcare law, employers with more than 50 full-time workers are required to either offer health insurance or pay a penalty. But earlier this year, federal health officials announced that employers with between 50 and 99 workers will have until January 2016 to comply with the rule.

House Republicans say Congress should be the branch of government making such changes to ObamaCare, not the administration.

“If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well,” Boehner said.

Democrats and the White House have mocked the lawsuit as a “political stunt” intended to fire up the Republican base ahead of the midterm elections.

“Instead of working with Democrats … Republicans would rather file a foolish and meritless lawsuit,” Reid said. “Everybody knows that this lawsuit is a sham – a big show meant to appease the Tea Party radicals in the House of Representatives.”

Reid said the employer mandate was included in the healthcare law at the insistence of Senate Republicans, and noted that the House had voted for a bill that would have delayed the employer mandate — the same action Obama took through executive order.

“House Republicans voted on legislation that would do the exact same thing,” Reid said. “So they’re suing him because he did what they wanted him to do.”

The House also voted to delay the individual mandate to have insurance, arguing it’s an unfair “double standard” to give the exemption only to businesses.

The House Rules Committee will move forward with the resolution approving the lawsuit against Obama on Wednesday. GOP leaders are expected to hold a vote on it before leaving town for the August recess.