Posted on 05/29/2007 6:07:21 PM PDT by LdSentinal
House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.
The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a “blue slip” for the color of its paper.
House Republicans used the same back-taxes mandate for a blue-slip threat that derailed last year’s immigration conference. The new Senate bill still must survive two more weeks of voter scrutiny and contentious amendments, but several conservatives already are lying in wait for the Senate to “make the same mistake twice,” as one House GOP aide put it.
“If we get an opportunity to do it, believe me, we’ll do it,” the aide said. “I think it’s going to be a matter of who will get there first. A number of people in the House are dying to be fingered as the person who killed [the Senate bill].”
As the bill’s Senate supporters spend the recess fighting a wildfire of grassroots resistance to the immigration deal, which held together after an intense first week, some House Republicans are unconvinced by outreach from their Senate brethren. They acknowledge that a blue slip may be their only recourse to stop a process they believe Democrats will dominate in conference.
Any House member can move to blue-slip a Senate-originated bill that raises revenue, though the protest requires a majority vote to send the legislation back across the Capitol and force immigration negotiators back to square one.
“We would certainly have the right [to a blue slip] and could exercise it,” another House GOP aide said.
“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), said. The House Immigration Reform Caucus that Bilbray chairs, bitterly opposed to the Senate bill, “will use any and every means necessary to see that the American people get the immigration [reform] they deserve,” Bardella added.
The list of House GOP critics who could race to blue-slip the Senate bill is a long one. Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), both staking presidential bids on opposition to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) all said through press secretaries that they are considering any and all options to counter the Senate bill. “I hope that the House will always defend its constitutional rights, and I would defer to House leadership to decide when that occurs,” Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said through a spokeswoman.
The back-taxes provision that could trigger the blue slip came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to take heavy fire on the presidential hustings for supporting the immigration deal McCain introduced a back-taxes amendment after a conference call in which Republican bloggers mentioned reports that the Bush administration had asked that this year’s bill not force the very costly process of tax collection among illegal immigrants.
“I’d not heard that proposal on the part of the president,” McCain said, according to a transcript of the call. “I would resist that.”
One Senate aide whose boss is supporting this year’s immigration push said reform supporters are well aware of the fierce House opposition to their bill.
“There are certain elements, probably on both sides of the aisle, in the House that are going to use any procedural or technical process to slow it down or kill it,” the Senate aide said. “That way of getting out of answering this issue, it’s sort of petty. It’s small ball. Right now, with this issue, we’re going major league.”
If the Senate bill falls victim to a blue slip, the aide added, it would be only after poison-pill amendments irrevocably weaken the measure’s delicate balance between border security, new merit-based visas, a temporary-worker program and safe harbor for the 12 million individuals in the country illegally.
Senate supporters have reason to cheer after the immigration bill weathered a week of close calls and interest-group anger to head into recess essentially intact. President Bush joined the fray with a speech yesterday urging lawmakers to send him a bill this year.
Yet some Senate Republicans may privately cheer on House members if a blue-slip threat becomes reality.
“Conservatives don’t care how the bill goes down. They just want it to go away,” an aide to a Senate Republican said. Retorting to Senate negotiators’ claim that criticism from both liberals and conservatives means their bill has bridged the political gap, the aide quipped: “It just might be that everyone hates it because it’s really bad.”
A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an avid supporter of the Senate deal and a cosponsor of his own House immigration bill, said the lawmaker is waiting to see how the Senate bill plays out before he gets nervous about whether one of his colleagues tries to kill the measure.
Meanwhile, Flake praised Bush for weighing in during recess, saying, “Those in Congress who may disagree with the president on this issue certainly can’t disregard his credibility on it. President Bush has been consistent on the need for comprehensive immigration reform, and he’s been consistently right.”
During a private gathering at the Capitol Hill Club last week, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to the bill as “a piece of s---,” according to reports.
When asked by reporters last week to expand on his comment, Boehner reiterated that the comments were made in private but conceded that he was not pleased with the legislation in its current form.
“I have serious concerns with the bill,” he said.
I hope this is true. The more it is delayed the less chance it will pass.
One of the things talk radio has been screaming about is that the back taxes provision was removed from the bill.
FWIW - I do hope it fails miserably. I think that if this abomination passes that first, the Republican Party will disintegrate. After some time chaos will overcome this land. The final result will be a wrenching and brutal hard right turn and then katy bar the door. This nation will be mad and it will be bloody - and I mean rivers of blood.
Come to think of it, its always up to 'conservatives' to pull the Grand Ol' Party's fat arse outta the fire.
It'd be nice to get a little respect every once in awhile in exchange.
Comprehensive Abomination
Harry Reid is a POS.
Smart move and hopefully they can reform the bill to take the “road to citizenship” away from illegal immigrants.
STOP IT. Any way you can. It sucks. President Bush has lost his mind over illegals. Let him look for a lageacy elsewhere. We dont need to deatroy our country with these people If this bill is passed there will be no stopping all of Mexico from entering.
We're supposed to march lockstep behind King George, you know.
Can’t the Hill be fined by Senate Democrats for not using the approved ‘undocumented workers’ tag instead of the more appropriate ‘illegal immigrants’? Least one media outlet still tells it somewhat like it is. Illegal freeloaders, however, is still my favorite.
Do it.
And so it IS!!! (there's that favorite Bill Clinton word again)
And people who back this amnesty POS should be given a “pink slip.”
Let's take this apart.
and safe harbor for the 12 million individuals in the country illegally
This is a new meme. It must be the spin on the Z Visa issue. The disinfo first was about "path to citizenship" without mentioning the Z Visas. Z Visas essentially legalize anyone who says they've been here 6 months. This is much worse than last year's bill. Since "the people" know what the Z Visa set up is, the spinmeisters have developed a defensive meme to define it: "safe harbor" relating postive senses of safety and protection. We will here more "safe harbor" descriptions about the Z Visas in the future I expect.
delicate balance
There is no balance, it's worse than last year's bill. Border security laws have been passed before without Amnesty+.
new merit-based visas
This is new, and played as a "conservative" matter. Really it isn't particularly, most advanced countries like Canada do this. Anyway, it will never be realized and is set for some indeterminate date in the future.
This is a very interesting topic. In fact the McCain amendment (1190) makes former illegals liable for back taxes only if they get a green card.
This is what I don’t understand though: The House has its own amnesty bill (Flake/Gutierrez), so if the Senate merges its bill with that bill, can they still make that rule about “revenue bills must originate from the House” stick?
It seems to me that this was tried last year, and lost.
I recall it was because the House didn’t vote on last year’s Senate bill, but had it’s own bill to forward and “compromise” in “conference committee.”
If I’m correct, Flake might be signaling he will part of the ploy by offereing his bill in this role.
These two solid conservatives are running for the presidency, yet almost all attention is instead lavished upon big-government faux-conservative frauds. Is it that so many people want milquetoast quasi-liberal redux, or is it simply a case of mass ignorance/mass stupidity?
Or is it the "vote for who can best triangulate in the general" mentality (worked great for Kerry!) that would have relegated RR to the "too conservative to win" pile and nominated Ford in '76 and (Rockefeller loser) John B. Anderson in '80?
Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It! Blue-slip-It!
Having been as staunch a supporter of the President as I have been throughout the war on terror and Iraq. . .it is just about heart-breaking to hear him talk today in terms that are disrespectful, arrogant and insulting to those who have been four-square behind him. . .
Said the President:
“Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something that they don’t like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do whats right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it. You can use it to frighten people. Or you can show leadership and solve the problem once and for all.”
it is very hard to hear President Bush come down so abysmally and unfairly upon the only real supporters he has had while the rest of the world has pounded him into mush.
But his virtual condemnation of conservatives who are truly concerned for the safety and future of this country. . .and to be labelled as people who “don’t want to do what’s right for America” - just because we find it impossible to wrap our minds around his incomprehensible desire to welcome with open arms and open borders 12-20 million criminals with no respect for our laws. . .
Well, let’s just say, it is extremely fortunate that it is not now the Fall of 2004, or George Bush probably would not have been re-elected.
But the rest of the bunch of latently-moronic Republicans in the Senate (and in the House if it gets that far, God forbid. . .) will become political toast if they don’t start listening to us real soon. . .
sr
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