Posted on 02/23/2016 11:14:59 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
The Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Senate after a series of votes in June 2013. Democrats, who controlled the Senate at the time, unanimously supported the bill, while most Republicans opposed it. The four Republicans on the gang - Marco Rubio, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake - of course voted for it, and also agreed with Democrats on a plan to kill almost all GOP amendments.
Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid allowed just a handful of amendments to reach the Senate floor. One, from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, would have prohibited the legalization of illegal immigrants in the United States until after the administration could prove it had maintained "effective control" of the borders for six months.
Rubio voted against the Grassley amendment. Sen. Ted Cruz voted for it.
Another Republican amendment, from Sen. John Thune, would have required the completion of 350 miles of fencing along the U.S. border that Congress had ordered in 1996 but had never been completed. Thune specified that the fencing had to be in place before legalization could commence. Thune also would have required the completion of 700 miles of such fencing before illegal immigrants' legal status could be made permanent.
Rubio voted against the Thune amendment. Cruz voted for it.
The other substantive GOP amendment allowed by Reid was from Sen. David Vitter. It would have delayed the granting of legal status until a biometric visa identity system first ordered by Congress in 1996 had been "fully implemented at every land, sea, and airport of entry" into the United States.
Rubio voted against the Vitter amendment. Cruz voted for it.
Earlier, Republicans offered dozens of amendments to the Gang of Eight bill when it was making its way through the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under a pre-arranged plan, the gang, including Rubio, agreed to kill any amendments they felt would threaten their legislation.
"The eight met in private before each committee hearing, hashing out which amendments they would support and which oppose as a united coalition," the Washington Post reported in May 2013. "Senate aides said amendments were rejected if either side felt they would shatter the deal."
For example, the Post reported, "GOP members of the group opposed several tough border-control amendments from Sen. Ted Cruz."
The public discovered the secret Rubio-Democratic agreement when the Judiciary Committee was considering an amendment that involved giving government payments to former illegal immigrants through the Earned Income Tax Credit program. Sen. Chuck Schumer, the leading Democrat on the Gang of Eight, was caught on an open microphone turning to an aide and saying, "Do our Republicans have a pass on this one, if they want?" It turned out they did, meaning Schumer would allow gang Republicans to vote against the measure.
Rubio was not on the Judiciary Committee, so he did not vote on the committee amendments. But he was part of the gang agreement to kill GOP amendments, several of which were from Cruz, who was on the committee.
The Gang of Eight bill came up for a final Senate vote on June 27, 2013. Rubio, as a key author of the legislation, voted for its passage. Cruz voted against it.
It's worth going through history because Rubio, now locked in a presidential primary race against Cruz, has argued that his position on immigration is similar to Cruz's.
"The bottom line is there isn't that big a difference between [Cruz] and I on how to approach immigration," Rubio told CBS News on Sunday.
Certainly in 2013, Rubio and Cruz could hardly have been more different in how they approached immigration. Rubio has since distanced himself from the gang bill, his signature achievement in his nearly five years in the Senate, saying that immigration reform cannot be accomplished by one giant bill and instead should be enacted piecemeal. Rubio also says - reminiscent of the Grassley amendment he helped kill - that security and enforcement must be in place before illegal immigrants can be legalized and placed on a path to citizenship.
It remains unclear where Rubio stands on the thousands of other provisions in his 1,197-page Gang of Eight bill. In five Republican presidential debates, he has been asked exactly one question about the substance of the bill. (The question was whether Rubio still supports a path to citizenship; he does, while Cruz doesn't.)
There's a chance Rubio will be asked more questions about the specifics of the gang bill in the weeks before Republicans begin voting in primaries and caucuses. It's not clear what he will say, although after the recent Las Vegas debate, a spokesman offered a preview of Rubio's answer.
"The provisions in the 2013 bill were the product of compromise and not what we would have done if we'd written the bill on our own," Rubio aide Alex Conant said. If a President Rubio undertook immigration reform, Conant added, the results "would not be the same as what the Senate passed in 2013."
That reasoning gives Rubio a rationale to abandon any part of the Gang of Eight that he chooses. But what happened in 2013 still matters. For one thing, it's not that long ago. And for another, Rubio himself believes the past is important. "If you're going to attack someone on a policy issue," Rubio said on CBS Sunday, "you need to be clear about where you stand on the issue and where you've stood in the past."
Ted Cruz Files Amendment To Deny Path To Citizenship As Senate Works On Bill
......"The amendments filed today to strengthen border security and reform our legal immigration system will not only bring meaningful, effective improvements to our immigration system, but also have a chance of becoming law," said Cruz in a statement. "America is a nation of immigrants, built by immigrants and we need to honor that heritage by fixing our broken immigration system, while upholding the rule of law and championing legal immigration."
His amendments are among more than 300 filed by the Tuesday evening deadline. Republicans wanting tighter enforcement provisions filed a majority of the amendments, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, leading the pack with 77 amendments.
Supporters of the bill, mainly of the part of it that would legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, kept a steady drumbeat in defense of the measure though emails, websites and social media.
In a press release, America's Voice, a leading national group that advocates for more lenient immigration laws, singled out Cruz's anti-citizenship amendment as particularly worrisome.
"This would not only destroy the path to citizenship in the Senate bill - the popular heart of an immigration reform solution - but also turn its back on 100 years of precedent in immigration policy," said the release..........
************************************
Dec 17, 2015: Politico
Who's right: Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio?
"....The bipartisan group of eight senators - including battle-tested veterans and relative newcomers like Rubio - painstakingly negotiated a delicate compromise in early 2013 that would overhaul every corner of the U.S. immigration system, including a 13-year pathway to citizenship for millions here illegally.
Fans and foes of the legislation, as well as observers at the time, knew the core bill couldn't change too dramatically because that would upset that compromise, which not only had the backing of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate but also coalitions off the Hill, such as labor unions and the business lobby.
Cruz's amendment - which called for stripping out a pathway to citizenship, but keeping a path for legalization - would have done precisely that.
The night before each Senate Judiciary Committee markup, senior Gang of Eight aides would huddle to scour through each of the amendments that were teed up for the following day, determining which proposals would be palatable and which would be unacceptable. This strategy was meant to ensure the core elements of the Gang of Eight deal would stay intact (the four members of the Gang who sat on the Judiciary Committee would vote in a bloc, usually with the rest of the committee Democrats, to vote down potential deal-killers).
"This one was one that clearly we all had to oppose because it went to the core of the deal," recalled an aide to a Senate Democrat during the 2013 negotiations. "It could've unraveled the whole deal. Sure, Cruz himself never called it a "poison pill" at the time. But no senator refers to his own proposal as a poison pill, even if it plainly is. The Gang of Eight never considered Cruz as "gettable," and it was well-known at the time that Cruz was never going to vote for the bill and was in fact, trying to kill it.".....
Is Rush lying now? I mean, anybody taking the side of Cruz must be lying.
?
I’m giving back-up on what Rush is discussing.
“I’m giving back-up on what Rush is discussing.”
i know. I’m being sarcastic.
Okay.
: )
Hard to get head in the "way-back" machine mode.
The CORRECT DATE of the Byron York article is:
December 21, 2015
He must be. Everyone knows that any defense of Cruz, especially on immigration policy, is a flat-out lie. Trump and Rubio both say so.
All of a sudden it sounds like Rush is getting his dirt out of boss-man’s hole.
Did Trump say that?
Trump said Cruz was lying about his immigration policy?
Both Trump and Rubio seem to be operating under the presumption that they can win without the support of the conservatives who back Cruz. Although it’s possible perhaps, even probable, that Trump can get the GOP nomination with his current base of support, it’s NOT true for Rubio. He’s making a major blunder by attacking Cruz and ignoring/avoiding conservatives at things like CPAC. Even Romney understood that he needed to at least pretend that he wanted the support of conservatives.
Trump supporters seem to have a poor understanding of his immigration plan which changes as frequently as a six month old’s diaper. It already has a name: TOUCHBACK AMNESTY
Cruz interview with George Stepanopholous:
“So Donald Trump’s position is once you deport them, it’s what’s called touchback. A lot of establishment Republicans had touchback,” Cruz said in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “Basically you make them fly back to their country for a minute, touch the ground, and then they come back with amnesty as citizens. Now, Donald is entitled to do that. He can advance that position, but he doesn’t get to pretend that it’s not amnesty if he’s legalizing 12 million people [who are] here illegally.”
Cruz also accused Trump of latching onto the issue of illegal immigration for political gain. Cruz said Trump was notably absent during the battle over the “Gang of Eight” immigration reform bill in 2013.
“I would note at that time, right in the middle of the fight, Donald Trump was publicly supporting amnesty. He was supporting Marco Rubio’s Dream Act,” Cruz said. “He was criticizing Mitt Romney for being too tough on immigration. That’s where Donald Trump was in 2013. Now, when he launched his campaign for president, suddenly he discovered illegal immigration was a problem.”
Mario, closest thing to Reagan, is what the woman is saying???????????
Mario Rubco is a duplicitous, lying weasel who wants to give the Democrats a permanent majority.
U.S.A. needs to abolish the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and return to the National Origins Formula which restricted immigration on the basis of existing proportions within the U.S. population.
US code 1182: “Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by president. Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, the president may, by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate
Kelly: "I look at your record, a lot, to see: Did Ted Cruz really want legalization, or didn't he?"
"I think the record supports you - that you did not want it; it does."
"It really was a poison pill amendment."
Then there is back and forth where Kelly states that Cruz had said that he wanted the Gang of Eight bill to pass.
Sen. Cruz corrects her and states that he wants immigration reform to pass -- but he never said he wanted the Gang of Eignt bill to pass. [He directs everyone to see the 11-page, very very detailed immigration plan on website (linked in comment below)].
Cruz explains tactics: "When debating Democrats [Schumer] you use the language of Democrats to show their hypocrisy."
"Schumer talked about 'coming out of the shadows' but it wasn't about that."
"Chuck Schumer said, 'If there is no citizenship, there is no reform and we'll kill the whole thing.'"
Their interview ended this way:
Megyn Kelly: "The record supports you." [Cruz: "Anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship."]
"It was a poison pill."
"You do have a consistent record on that; I will give you that; we did look back on it." - Megyn Kelly to Ted Cruz: "The record supports you."
“Severely conservative.”
I support the wall, and I supported it before I voted against it.
((shaking my head))
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