Posted on 02/03/2015 2:55:50 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Two senators from very different wings of the Republican party united to outline how the GOP might counter a Democratic filibuster of the House bill that denies funding for President Obama’s immigration executive orders.
Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) argued during a Senate GOP lunch that if Democrats filibuster the Department of Homeland Security funding bill — which blocks implementation of Obama’s 2012 deferred action program and his November 2014 “adult amnesty” — Republicans should respond by blocking only the 2014 orders. The thinking, according to a GOP senator who was in the lunch, is that Senate Democrats will have a harder time staying unified for a filibuster if Republicans have a narrower focus.
“What I have said for months now is the central focus of Republicans should be stopping President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty,” Cruz tells National Review Online when asked to confirm the details of his case. “That’s what Republican candidates promised the voters in November and that’s the promise we need to fulfill.”
Collins does not share Cruz’s antipathy for the 2012 program, but she told reporters that the 2014 orders are obviously unconstitutional.
“The 2014 order is not even a close call,” she says. “It is so broad in its reach that the president himself said, more than 20 times, that he didn’t have the authority to take the kind of action that is included in the 2014 order.”
Cruz also faulted Senate Democrats for refusing even to debate the issue. “It would be a real mistake if Democrats choose this afternoon to filibuster funding for the Department of Homeland Security,” he says. “At a time when we face grave national security threats, it is the height of irresponsibility for Democrats to filibuster and try to kill funding for DHS.”
Update: Senate Democrats filibustered a motion to proceed to a debate on the DHS bill, 51–48.
Cruz is starting to build a coalition.
Looks like he already has something with Walker.
Very Smart.
That's right, Ted.
What do you mean?
If true, that is a good thing. I'd like to see Cruz reach across the aisle to Warren. She claims to hate crony capitalism as much as decent Americans do, and it would be nice to see the Tea Party and far left work together to cut immoral spending that she objects to. Then I'd like to see the Tea Party and moderate democrats work together to cut wasteful social spending that accomplishes nothing - cut three dollars that don't deliver results and replace them with two dollars spent more sensibly.
President Cruz will need at least a little experience building coalitions before he starts his new job on January 20, 2017. Instead of compromises where both sides get bigger government, I'd like to see compromises where both sides give up something on their own "side" politically and in return get something smaller but more useful on their "side". It's time to shrink government and make it better (I know smaller and better are redundant for government, but we can make it smarter too, I hope).
“Since.it is financial why use reconciliation that only requires a 51 vote majority”
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They want to have a chance of overriding an Obama veto. Failing that, at least they’d have the ‘RATS (and RINOs?) who voted against it on record as favoring Obama’s unconstitutional usurpations to use against them in their next election.
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