Posted on 08/11/2013 11:39:06 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
President Barack Obama insisted Friday that the Senate Gang of Eight immigration bill would pass the GOP-led House, but that “internal Republican caucus politics” were preventing Congress from sending a comprehensive reform bill to his desk.
The Gang of Eight’s wide-reaching legislation, which passed the Senate with 68 votes in late June, has essentially evaporated after House Republicans – adverse to many provisions in the 1,000-plus page bill – said they would not take it up.
Obama said during his news conference that he was “absolutely confident” that if the Gang of Eight bill was put on the House floor, it would pass. It would need mostly Democratic votes to do so.
“The challenge right now is not that there aren’t a majority of House members, just like a majority of Senate members, who aren’t prepared to support this bill,” Obama said. “The problem is internal Republican caucus politics.”
Instead of the Senate’s bill, the House leadership has proposed a piecemeal approach that tackles different parts of immigration reform with separate bills. And there is a bipartisan group that is hoping to release its comprehensive reform bill in September.
Still, Senate advocates of the Gang of Eight bill are hoping to revive it if the two chambers make it into conference negotiations – a view that Majority Leader Harry Reid outlined earlier Friday.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
NO AMNESTY!!
KILL THE BILL!!
He says that like it's a bad thing.
If the purple lipped prince keeps it up maybe they still will win it, if enough people believe him.
What you said.....
Half the GOP is for this bill it seems like, they won’t read it though.
The truth is that the Senate bill has not even made it to the House.
I am looking to the East from my hillside home down to the water’s edge to the marina and out across Lake Washington to the Bellevue skyline and further to the Cascades. I see a few pedestrians jogging or walking their dogs. A Bald Eagle soars high long the shoreline.
I find it unusual that people are not rioting in my neighborhood streets and participating in mass demonstrations because the immigration bill has been held up.
So to make sure I was not delusioned I visited 3 different websites for local broadcasters and also the website for the Seattle Times and I did not see any news of mass demonstrations or riots.
I also looked at the Bloomberg website and USA Today website and again there is no uproar regarding the immigration bill held up.
How could this be?
If hope this is true. If it is, the saints be praised.
We are all at the mercy of the consultants who are running Washington and crunching data, in between fancy east coast vacations, and from their towers at the local Starbucks.
They are all actors on a stage. “Immigration” is greek week game of tug o’war. Today it is them, tomorrow it is us. Then them, then us.. Very few of the people in DC are serious adults.
“Obama: GOP politics stopping immigration bill”
We can only hope.
I wonder how many of the Pubs that think this bill is good for growing the base are from districts that have any illegals living there. It seems to me that the majority of illegals are concentrated in Rat controlled cities and the expansion of districts to account for the increased population their legalization represents will serve to strengthen Rat controlled districts and possibly flip marginal suburban Pub districts. I don't see the benefit to the Pubs.
In addition to losing marginal Pub districts legalization will fracture the Pub party. They will be a minority party from here on out because a 3rd party will siphon off the conservative base. If all this is plain as day to me, why in the world don't the Pubs see it.
Typical rhetoric from Obama - the other side of the story:"The Gang of Eight’s wide-reaching legislation, which passed the Senate with 68 votes in late June, has essentially evaporated after House Republicans – adverse to many provisions in the 1,000-plus page bill – said they would not take it up."
Republicans, NOT of the gang of 8, should step up and speak about those provisions...name them so Obama can no long blame conservatives and Republicans for his profound disregard of facts.
People who love this country are against the immigration bill. People who hate this country are for it. How that splits up between Democrats and Republicans tells us something. Where Obama comes down on the issue is no surprise.
The American people and the best interests of the nation are stopping the Amnesty bill.
When such a revenue-raising bill comes out of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, currently Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), can use a procedure called a “blue slip resolution” to automatically kill it on the grounds that it is unconstitutional. Stockman has been promising to attempt to kill the Senate's bill that way and, as such, Reid has refused to send it to the House, thereby protecting the bill from being “blue slipped.”
This is why supporters of the Senate bill are so eager to conference with the House. They need even a simple piece of legislation on immigration to get around the constitutional problem. Conferees could strip out all the language of the House bill and substitute the Senate provisions, and the resulting bill would be constitutional.
And for the same reason Obamacare should be ruled unconstitutional as well:
House Could Sink Obamacare
Excerpt:
Joseph E. Schmitz’ Perspective: The Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, and 19 House colleagues co-sponsored H.Res. 153 on April 12, “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009 violates article I, section 7, clause 1 of the United States Constitution because it was a ‘Bill for raising Revenue’ that did not originate in the House of Representatives.”
The Supreme Court has never before addressed an Origination Clause challenge that was so blatantly obvious. The only surprise is that no one raised it sooner.
In this case, there is no serious question that Obamacare originated in the Senate. And thanks to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, there is now no question that it is considered a tax. It’s irrelevant whether or not the Obama administration attempts to characterize the measure as an amendment to a House bill.
According to a March 15, 2011, Congressional research Service (CRS) report, “The Origination Clause of the U.S. Constitution: Interpretation and Enforcement,” “The House’s primary method for enforcement of the Origination Clause is through a process known as ‘blue-slipping.’ Blue-slipping is the term applied to the act of returning to the Senate a measure that the House has determined violates its prerogatives as defined by the Origination Clause.”
One might ask why there was no “blue slip” in the House after Sen. Harry Reid introduced his 2,075-page self-described “Senate Health Care Bill,” which promptly morphed into an “amendment” to a six-page House bill unrelated to healthcare: “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009,” which had passed the House by a vote of 416-0.
The answer is that the proverbial 13th hour circumstances of the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka PPACA, ACA, or Obamacare), combined with the facts that (a) the Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House at the time, and (b) no one knew that the Supreme Court would sustain the individual mandate component of the “Senate Health Care Bill” under the taxing power (the focus was on the Commerce Clause), suggesting that this one just slipped by everyone in the House who might have blue-slipped it — pun intended.
According to the above-mentioned CRS Report, “Any Member of the House may offer such a [blue-slip] resolution, but normally it is the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee who would do so. Occasionally, another member of the committee may be designated.”
The CRS Report explains, “because enforcement of the Origination Clause in the House is based on a question of the constitutional privilege of the House, it is not subject to restrictions based on timeliness. The House can assert its privilege at any time it is in possession of the bill and related papers (that is, anytime the actual documents are not physically in possession of the Senate or a conference committee). Therefore, the House is not limited to enforcing its prerogative only through blue-slipping a measure upon its initial receipt from the Senate.”
http://www.newsmax.com/JosephESchmitz/House-Obamacare-Origination-Clause/2013/04/22/id/500823
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