-Sen. Jeff Sessions: McCaul Bill Breaks Republican Promise to Voters on Immigration
-Anti-Amnesty Leaders: New House Border Bill ‘Flawed,’ Could Be Bigger Immigration Package ‘Stalking Horse’
Boehner letter campaign followed by plans for Obamacare, Common Core repeal
Jan 20, 2015
First came the ongoing Don’t be Yellow, Dump Boehner Now! campaign, which enables citizens to let all 246 GOP members of the House majority know of their opposition to House Speaker John Boehner because of his decision to give President Obama 2015 funding for Obamacare and “amnesty.”
Then there was the flood of telephone calls to members of Congress that developed at the same time, rattling the GOP House leadership.
The Washington Examiner reported: “There were hundreds of them, jamming the phone lines of the district and Capitol offices of dozens of House GOP lawmakers. The callers were not angry about legislation. Nor were they asking for help with a local matter. They were demanding their representative vote against Boehner … in his bid to win election to a third term as speaker.”
“We’ve never been lobbied quite like that,” House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told the Examiner.
Now, a distinct move toward conservative ideals and goals is developing in the House with the creation of a new caucus that apparently would focus on a “big vision” for the party. It’s led by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who said in a Gannett report: “If you set small goals, you’re not likely to accomplish big things. Our party had better understand what is at stake. We had better get it.”
The report explained Jordan is working to form a new caucus of those who want to move the GOP, including its leadership, into bold action on immigration, spending and more.
“The idea is to leverage the Republican sweep in November’s elections into conservative victories in Congress – and to serve as a check on the GOP leadership if they move too far toward the middle … to compromise with the White House and congressional Democrats,” the report said.
Jordan was vague on details, saying there are a lot of decisions that remain to be made.
But Gannett reported that his comments at a recent appearance at Heritage Action were plain.
There, he said, actions such as repealing Obamacare’s medical device tax, which has cost American jobs, and promoting trade, all are fine.
“But they are not the first things or only things we should do,” he said.
What should happen?
“Repealing Obamacare and unraveling the Common Core education standards,” Gannett reported he said.
Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks joined in endorsing Jordan’s ideas.
“There’s all this talk about the Keystone XL pipeline and repealing the medical device tax. Whoop-DE-do. That’s big vision?” he told Gannett.
Boxes with thousands of letters from the “Dump Boehner” campaign have been delivered to the 246 GOP members in the House already. Boehner won re-election to the post when the House convened early this month, but opposition remains.
Already, the campaign has generated some 570,000 letters to members of Congress,
There also have been a few outspoken blasts at Boehner from his own party, a rarity for a House speaker.
Politico reported Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., who was one of the dozens of House members who voted against Boehner’s campaign for the speaker’s post, said: “I don’t believe that John Boehner is the best man for the job. This may surprise some people (including the speaker) but it has far more to do with his leadership abilities than it does with his conservatism.
“What I mean by that is that if you can’t lead and you can’t deliver, then your own personal political philosophy is pretty much irrelevant. I’ve gone into far more detail about this criticism with him privately than I will here, but suffice it to say that there have been far too many occasions over the last four years where the House has been ineffective, and America just can’t wait any longer. America needs vision, a sense of purpose and an ability to follow through. We aren’t getting those things.”
The Examiner reported Boehner was so agitated by the phone calls that he raised the issue to his rank and file in a private meeting. Boehner was defensive, according to witnesses, telling GOP lawmakers he has long espoused the tea-party principles that the callers accused him of abandoning.
Joseph Farah, WND founder and campaign organizer, said the opposition to Boehner is largely because of two issues – Obamacare and amnesty. Republicans in the U.S. House before Christmas, under Boehner’s leadership, allowed funding for both programs to continue into 2015.
The campaign has earned the support of the founder of Tea Party Nation, one of the organizations that helped rouse the American electorate in 2010 and give the GOP control of the U.S. House.
“Absolutely, I want people storming the halls of Congress,” Judson Phillips told WND. “Melting the phone lines and anything else.”
“So, I love [WND CEO Joseph Farah’s] letter writing idea.”
Recruit your friends, neighbors, and fellow commuters to the “Don’t Be Yellow: Dump Boehner Now” campaign with this exclusive bumper sticker.
In a commentary in the Washington Times, Phillips explained why he thinks Boehner should be replaced.
Thousands of letters are in each box
“A month after its incredible victory, the GOP squandered its mandate, surrendering to the Democrats,” he wrote. “The GOP-led House of Representatives did not proclaim its mandate and hold off on major decisions until the Republican majority in the Senate was sworn in. No, they went to the GOP position of preemptive surrender and gave President Obama and the Democrats almost everything they wanted.
“Despite the pleas and demands from the base, the GOP did nothing to stop Mr. Obama’s executive amnesty. They even rewarded left-wing billionaires who had spent millions to keep the Democrats in power by extending so-called ‘Green Energy’ subsidies,” he wrote. “The architect of the Republican surrender was House Speaker John Boehner.”
JOIN THE DON’T BE YELLOW, DUMP BOEHNER NOW CAMPAIGN. http://superstore.wnd.com/Dump-Boehner-Campaign
Letters tell House GOP members they need to leadership
The letter explains to members of the U.S. House that two issues have “prompted Americans to turn in droves to the Republican Party in November 2014 – Barack Obama’s blatantly unconstitutional executive action to provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, and the deliberately deceptive restructuring of America’s health-care system through Obamacare, which threatens to unravel the greatest health delivery system in the world.”
Pointing out that Republicans before the election “solemnly vowed to STOP this lame-duck president,” the letter states: “Now you have the power, right and duty to stop him.
“But it won’t happen with John Boehner leading you. You know this to be true. The trillion-dollar budget deal is just the latest proof that Boehner is not capable of leading the House to victory during this critical period.”
The campaign allows people to send letters, with their own names and addresses via FedEx, all for the one price of $29.95, to each of the House GOP members.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/01/house-members-eyeing-hard-conservative-line/
—-
Sen. Jeff Sessions: McCaul Bill Breaks Republican Promise to Voters on Immigration
20 Jan 2015 by Matthew Boyle
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), arguably the intellectual leader of the national movement against immigration amnesty, has come out swinging against a new border bill proposed by House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX).
Sessions issued a lengthy and blistering statement detailing the reasons he thinks McCaul’s bill would be a mistake for any Republican who supports stopping President Obama’s executive amnesty and other “lawlessness” on immigration. The senator writes:
Republicans won a historic midterm vote on the promise to take real action—not symbolic gestures—to end the immigration lawlessness. It is essential that any immigration measures moved by the Republican Congress actually do the job. Too often, Congress will pass anything on immigration except that which will actually work. Indeed, the repudiated Gang of Eight bill was touted as the ‘toughest border security [and] enforcement measures in U.S. history.’ Unfortunately, border legislation being marked-up on Wednesday in the House Homeland Security Committee again fails to include the measures necessary to fulfill its promises.
Sessions writes that McCaul’s bill does nothing to stop Obama’s catch-and-release immigration policies. In recent months, immigration agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been prevented from actually apprehending and deporting illegal aliens when they’re caught. Instead, the illegal aliens are allowed to stay. While they’re waiting for adjudication proceedings (that few actually even show up at) they can take job opportunities away from struggling Americans. Sessions adds:
One of the most dramatic ways in which the President has undermined immigration enforcement is by ordering agents to release apprehended illegal border-crossers by the tens of thousands. Yet the pending legislation does nothing to end this endemic practice of catch-and-release, ensuring large amounts of illegal immigration will continue unabated. The Chairman McCaul proposal does not include the following reforms needed to achieve a sound immigration system: it does not end catch-and-release; it does not require mandatory detention and return; it does not include worksite enforcement; it does not close dangerous asylum and national security loopholes; it does not cut-off access to federal welfare; and it does not require completion of the border fence. Surprisingly, it delays and weakens the longstanding unfulfilled statutory requirement for a biometric entry-exit visa tracking system.
Sessions said that Congress, especially Republicans, should have learned form the border crisis this past summer that it can’t continue to support Obama’s non-enforcement policies by just throwing money at the border without substantive changes to immigration law.
“If Congress learned anything from last year’s ongoing border disaster, it should be that border security cannot be achieved unless immigration agents are permitted to do their jobs and our laws are actually being enforced,” Sessions said. “A nation cannot control its borders if being caught violating those borders does not result in one’s swift return home.”
Sessions said that since McCaul’s bill doesn’t change any of those immigration policies, the money it would throw at the border would just instead by used by Obama to further facilitate administration policies that enable illegal immigration.
As it stands now, Congress provides billions of dollars every year to the Department of Homeland Security for border security and immigration enforcement and yet DHS uses those resources to flout the laws Congress has passed, rather than to enforce them. Without ending catch-and-release, any additional funds for DHS will simply be used to facilitate the transfer of more illegal immigrants into U.S communities. Border security must be approached differently in a time when we have a President who makes up his own laws, and where illegal immigrants actually hope they will be apprehended so they can be released into an American city or town. We live in a new reality.
Sessions listed out a series of reforms that would need to be included in any effective bill.
Those measures include “mandatory E-Verify,” “mandatory detention and repatriation for illegal entrants,” “expedited deportation for border-crossers,” a closing of “asylum loopholes,” barring access for illegal aliens to welfare and tax credits, “penalties for the Administration’s continued failure to implement the biometric entry-exit system as required by law,” “penalties for the Administration’s continued failure to build 700 miles of double-layer border fence,” and “refusing visas to countries with high overstay rates or that will not repatriate their citizens.”
Sessions notes as Americans are hungry for leadership to stop the president’s policies on immigration, and Republicans should step up.
“Americans have begged and pleaded for years for an end to the lawlessness,” Sessions said:
But the politicians have refused to listen. Time and again, proposals are offered with tough promises that the legislation does not fulfill. This time must be different. We cannot be satisfied with measures that create the appearance of doing something while changing little. We need reforms that actually work, protecting the jobs and communities of the American citizens we represent.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/20/sen-jeff-sessions-explains-mccauls-new-border-bill-fails-to-adequately-fix-immigration-issues/
—-
Anti-Amnesty Leaders: New House Border Bill ‘Flawed,’ Could Be Bigger Immigration Package ‘Stalking Horse’
20 Jan 2015 by Matthew Boyle
A new bill from Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, may be nothing more than a stalking horse for a larger immigration package that House Republican leadership seeks, anti-amnesty leaders tell Breitbart News. What’s more, they say, despite all the hype and promises from McCaul and other Republicans on his committee, the bill leaves unaddressed the source of the problem that causes illegal immigration—and they argue it should not be considered some sort of solution.
McCaul introduced his bill, H.R. 399—titled the “Secure Our Borders First Act”—last Friday. The currently 72-page bill is scheduled for a markup on Wednesday, the day after President Obama’s the State of the Union speech. That means few in Congress will be paying attention to the minute details of McCaul’s bill.
To make matters more interesting, when McCaul introduced the bill, he did so with a slickly produced video meant to sell the bill to the public as being tough on the border.
“The southern border of the United States runs almost 2,000 miles long,” McCaul says in the opening of the campaign-ad-like video meant to sell his bill, as videos of border terrain appear. “That is greater than the distance between Chicago and Mexico City. Knowing what and who is coming across our border keeps Americans safe. In the past we’ve seen everything from the running of drugs and human trafficking, to drug cartels and potential terrorists on our southern border. This hurts our economy and places Americans in greater danger.”
The fast-track timing by McCaul on this bill—and the heavy push behind it—also nearly certainly indicates that House GOP leaders approval of it, aides to likely opponents of the bill tell Breitbart News. Republican Study Committee (RSC) members will be pitched on the plan at their Wednesday meeting. The new RSC chairman, Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), has said he doesn’t believe his role is challenging Speaker John Boehner’s authority. He wants to minimize battles with leadership.
In addition, some aides say that the use of the word “first” in the title implies that House GOP leaders are planning a series of immigration bills in the coming months, meaning establishment Republicans plan to drag the internal war in the GOP about immigration into the 2016 presidential process, which will ramp up in the next few months.
“If Republicans back that bill, then the party really doesn’t care anymore about telling the truth and standing up for everyday Americans,” one GOP congressional aide told Breitbart News. “The [McCaul] bill is a joke, and a sad one at that. Just a bunch of gobbly-gook empty promises for members to go home and say they supported something. Ain’t gonna fly for them, though. More ways to get the facts out nowadays. Voters are increasingly on to these sorts of charades designed to fool constituents.”
That aide added that the GOP doesn’t get the moniker the “stupid party” without reason, and if Republicans in the House back this legislation from McCaul they’ll further earn that wisecrack nickname.
“The GOP establishment still thinks they’re smarter than us,” the aide said. “Or else they’re too stupid to know otherwise. The GOP is the ‘stupid party’, after all.”
Another office noted to Breitbart News that talking points pre-rebutting Obama’s Tuesday evening State of the Union circulated to House Republican offices on Monday by the House GOP conference chairwoman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) don’t mention Obama’s amnesty at all. Instead, they also include the news that the GOP response to Obama’s speech will for the first time also be available in Spanish in a speech by pro-amnesty Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL). The lengthy email does contain talking points about healthcare, the Keystone XL pipeline and other specific policy matters—as well as general thematic ideas—but there is absolutely no mention of the biggest issue in politics at this time. That’s a stunning omission.
It’s worth noting that McMorris Rodgers’ congressional district is home to the pro-amnesty lobbying and high-tech powerhouse Microsoft, a company whose executives have been almost as intricately involved in pushing for a comprehensive immigration package—whether in one bill or a group of bills—as Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
These details follow a warning from Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) this weekend for Americans to watch out for shenanigans from Republican leadership when it comes to immigration in Congress.
“Yep that’s what Jefferson said, The Price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance,” Gohmert said in an interview that aired from the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition Convention in Myrtle Beach on Breitbart News. “And that means voters have to be vigilant. They have to make sure they are not being fooled by what they’re told is going on. They have to get to the bottom of it. And Breitbart helps us do that by the way.”
Kevin Broughton, a spokesman for Tea Party Patriots, told Breitbart News his organization is digging deep into the bill text before weighing in further. But the group does have some serious concerns with the bill already.
Conservatives are constantly worried about what GOP leadership may be up to on immigration as it’s no secret that Boehner and others want to move an immigration package through Congress. “As we delve into this bill that was dropped on a Friday of a holiday weekend, we have some serious concerns,” Broughton said in an email. “When we complete our analysis and get feedback from the grassroots, the political ruling class will hear from us in a big way, especially if this is a stalking horse for amnesty.”
One GOP congressional aide added, “if the Republican leadership weren’t so moronic, our country would enjoy a prosperous conservative majority.”
Jessica Vaughan, a senior immigration analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies and former State Department official, laid out several of the specific issues she’s found with the legislation in a lengthy email to Breitbart News.
“I hardly know where to start in enumerating all the weaknesses of this bill,” Vaughan said. “First of all, its very concept is flawed. The bill throws an enormous amount of money at the Dept. of Homeland Security and micro-manages the deployment of technology and infrastructure, and sets out detailed metrics that all miss the point of what is driving illegal immigration today.”
Vaughan said that spending money on the border isn’t going to solve the problem. She blames the “border crisis” from this past summer—where tens of thousands of Central American children trekked illegally into America only to be taken in and allowed to stay, on immigration policies implemented by both President Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush. McCaul’s bill, she notes, doesn’t even attempt to tackle that problem:
What we know, especially from our experience over the last year with the border surge, is that the influx of illegal immigration is occurring because illegal aliens know that they will likely succeed in their goal to work here. It’s not that the border is so porous (even though it is in some places) but because immigration laws simply are not enforced, except sometimes against the most egregious criminals. Those who reach the border either get past the Border Patrol, or they are arrested and then allowed (and encouraged) to join family members and demand drawn-out deportation proceedings – and receive a work permit while they wait. Those who overstay know they will not be a target for enforcement and that many employers will hire them without consequence. Illegal aliens who are detected are ignored by ICE, or released to await the same drawn-out proceedings, from which aliens can abscond without consequence. This bill addresses none of these problems. Even worse, it offers fake border security, which is worse than mediocre border security.
Two other House Homeland Security Committee members joined McCaul in the video: Newly elected freshman Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX) and Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI).
“The biggest problem is we do not have ‘operational control’ of any of our borders, actually,” Miller says in the 3 minute 16 seconds long video posted on the House Homeland Security Committee’s YouTube page.
A bill that Miller introduced last Congress—one that dealt with biometric security measures—was suspected of being another stalking horse meant to ultimately help the Senate’s then-passed “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill through the House of Representatives via a conference committee.
What leadership was trying to do for several months was pass various separate immigration bills through the House, then go to a conference committee, where leaders from both chambers of Congress would confer and hash out the differences between the House bills and the Senate bill. That could have ultimately resulted in a full amnesty bill sneaking through Congress to the president’s desk for his signature.
As the plan became public, and only after several months of anti-amnesty activists protesting, Boehner finally ended the plans for a conference committee with the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill. A hearing that was supposed to happen on Miller’s bill was abruptly, in the middle of the government shutdown over Obamacare funding, canceled and the bill didn’t see any action after that as preparations for the 2014 elections took center stage, according to the Library of Congress’ bill tracking website.
Vaughan notes that one of the phrases, “operational control,” that appears in this new McCaul bill—and one that Miller touted in this high-production-value video—is “pointless” if immigration agents can’t enforce immigration laws, which under the McCaul bill she notes wouldn’t happen:
It aims to establish ‘operational control’ of the border, which means that all illegal entries are prevented. That’s a great concept, and an essential goal. But it is pointless if those who are apprehended are simply released into the country under the moniker of ‘unaccompanied minor’ or ‘asylum applicant’ or ‘in deportation proceedings,’ all of which really mean ‘released,’ often with permission to work. A controlled catch & release policy is still a catch & release policy that burdens American taxpayers, endangers public safety, and encourages more illegal immigration.
Vaughan also points to how the bill calls for only 27 more miles of fencing—hardly even close to the full border, which McCaul noted in his video is nearly two thousand miles long.
“It proposes to build 27 more miles of fencing,” Vaughan said. “That’s just a blip on the line of unsecured southwest border. Hudspeth County, Texas alone has 95 miles of unfenced border. Instead, Congress should force DHS to finish the job mandated in the Secure Fence Act of 2006.”
Vaughan also said that even though the bill doesn’t change the Obama policies of keeping Border Patrol from apprehending and deporting illegal aliens, it has lots of plane and drone flights along the border—which she says is “pointless” because Border Patrol can’t do anything about illegal immigration under this bill. Vaughan concludes:
The bill focuses on observing how many people attempt to enter, not on deterring them, catching them, or returning them. It requires DHS to collect a lot of metrics. This is an acknowledgement that no assessment of the state of border security is complete with only border apprehension statistics. They require the collection of data on ‘gotaways’ and recidivists, which is helpful to a point. But one very important metric is missing – the bill does not require DHS to disclose what happens to those illegal migrants who are caught; are they returned or released?
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/20/anti-amnesty-leaders-new-house-border-bill-flawed-could-be-bigger-immigration-package-stalking-horse/
Tagged: abortion, al-Qaida, “Muslim Mafia, benghazi, Caliphate, Chemical Weapons, Christian, collapse of America, Constitution, dictator, Ebola, foreclosure, Hamas, immigration, IRS, Islam, Islamist, Israel, jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, Nazi, NSA, Obama, obamacare, radical Islam, rights, Second Amendment, Syria, Tea Party, Tyrannical Government, voter fraud, White House