Free Republic

Every generation of conservative leaders must rise to the occasion to confront the challenge of the time. The challenge at present is to stop Obama’s war on our borders and thereby his war on the rule of law. Will conservatives rise to the occasion? When the 114th Congress convenes in January, Republicans from across the political sphere will be offering advice concerning the focus of the new GOP-led majority in both houses of Congress. Conservatives will want to focus on taxes, others want to focus on entitlement spending. Still others want to focus on an anti-regulatory agenda. All of these...

Last month Republicans won a wave election picking up a dozen seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate. Last week the Republicans ignored the will of the voters and voted in favor of President Obama’s budget initiatives. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to Obamacare, so the Republicans fully funded it without making any changes. The country is overwhelmingly opposed to amnesty, in particular the country is opposed to amnesty created by the executive branch alone. Rather than refuse to fund the President’s amnesty power grab, the Republicans are funding it completely. They’re even spending a billion dollars...

House Speaker John Boehner’s staff says he has not made a commitment to the White House to move an overhaul of the immigration laws this year, pushing back against comments made this week by a senior advisor in the Obama administration made this week. Valerie Jarrett told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she thinks there’s a window “this summer, between now and August, to get something done. “We have a commitment from Speaker Boehner, who’s very frustrated with his caucus,” Jarrett told the newspaper. Michael Steel, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican, said Boehner has not made a commitment to...

A day after reports that House Speaker John A. Boehner is telling fundraisers he is determined to get an immigration bill done this year, the Ohio Republican’s spokesman walked those comments back slightly, saying any action will still depend on President Obama. “Nothing has changed. As he’s said many times, the Speaker believes step-by-step reform is important, but it won’t happen until the president builds trust and demonstrates a commitment to the rule of law,” said Brendan Buck, a Boehner spokesman. Early this year Mr. Boehner released a series of principles for a broad immigration overhaul, and it seemed like...

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is "hellbent" on passing amnesty legislation, and other GOP leaders are signaling to donors and lobbyists that they also want to pass legislation this Congress, even though attempting to do so would depress the GOP base and create divisions within the party ahead of 2014's midterm elections that could give Republicans control of Congress. According to the Wall Street Journal, Boehner told donors at a Las Vegas fundraiser in March that he was "hellbent on getting this done this year." After he met with President Barack Obama at the White House in February, Boehner said...

The Chamber of Commerce and 635 big businesses, including Facebook, sent a letter on Tuesday to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) urging "legislative action to seize this opportunity to fix our dysfunctional immigration system by enacting meaningful immigration reforms this year." Saying they are encouraged by the House GOP leadership's "immigration principles" that they consider "guideposts," the business organizations wrote that they are "united in the belief that we can and must do better for our economy and country by modernizing our immigration system." They also pressed for amnesty by writing about the need to respect "family unity.""Done properly, reform...

In an abrupt switch from his months of work to bring immigration reform back from life support, Speaker John Boehner told reporters today that the issue cannot move forward until President Obama proves he can be a trustworthy partner to implement the law as written. “There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes,” Boehner said. The change in tack comes after rank-and-file members pushed hard against action on the issue this year when immigration “principles” when unveiled at a retreat...

WASHINGTON — Speaker John Boehner: Any immigration legislation would be difficult to pass this year.

In an abrupt switch from his months of work to bring immigration reform back from life support, Speaker John Boehner told reporters today that the issue cannot move forward until President Obama proves he can be a trustworthy partner to implement the law as written. “There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws. And it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes,” Boehner said. The change in tack comes after rank-and-file members pushed hard against immigration “principles” unveiled at a retreat last week and top immigration hawks had begun...

House Speaker John Boehner is defending new Republican immigration principles from critics on the right who complain it rewards illegal immigration and plays into President Obama’s hands. On Tuesday, Boehner’s office released a Q&A explaining why the speaker had decided to pursue immigration reform and how it would address major concerns within his party. “The focus of this Congress should be on creating jobs and growing our economy,” the document reads. “Reforms to our immigration system will accomplish those goals and address a serious national security issue.” The immigration principles, released at the House GOP’s retreat in Maryland last week,...

Speaker John Boehner isn't ready to let the dream die. On Tuesday, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell told reporters immigration is just not in the cards in 2014. Last Thursday, rank-and-file House members sent a loud message at that President Obama is not the partner for legislation, spooking even top proponent Paul Ryan. The editors from National Review, Weekly Standard, and numerous other top conservative pundits have urged the Ohio Republican to cut it out. However, since the GOP retreat last week, Boehner has just kept marching along. “I think leadership's focus and my focus is to get [immigration] done...

Immigration is the zombie of political issues--even when it is dead, it is still alive. The combination of the Democratic Party, business interests, and a GOP operative class yearning for its promise of improved standing with Hispanic voters means that you can never really count it out. That said, it is hard to imagine Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) moving forward after yesterday's closed-door showdown. According to estimates from those who were in the room--both in favor of moving forward and against--the dozens of GOP lawmakers who spoke were at least 80-20 against bringing a bill to the floor this year....

Less than twelve hours into the Republican retreat and the leaks and attacks came fast and furious. John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan intend to push immigration through the United States House of Representatives. The bulk of the House Republicans thus far seem opposed, but Boehner and his lieutenants intend to find a path forward. They will start bid and grandiose and whittle their way down into something, anything, to show they intend to move the ball forward. Conservatives inside and outside the retreat began preemptively crying foul. The bill is going to suck. We all know...

House Speaker John Boehner’s ex-chief of staff Barry Jackson (pictured, right) is now working with the Chamber of Commerce to help its lobbying campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. “The former chief of staff to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is working as a consultant for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the big business trade group pushes Congress to enact immigration reform,” Politico reported Monday afternoon. While his firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck publicly registered to lobby for the chamber on immigration reform in June, Jackson's involvement was not previously known because he is acting as a non-lobbying adviser. BHFS confirmed...

Top House Republican leaders' ambitious plans to tackle immigration this year may already be in trouble before the House Speaker has even had a chance to unveil his ideas on how to fix problems that have long plagued the nation and, more recently, divided the GOP. Republicans on Wednesday kick off a three-day retreat where leaders are expected, among other initiatives, to call for legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, will unveil his legislative outline that’s also likely to include strengthening border security, adding more high tech visas, and revamping the guest worker program. But...

House Speaker John Boehner declined to speak about forthcoming immigration “principles” at a press conference Tuesday, even as top party officials have in past days said it would include “legal status” for millions of illegal immigrants. Boehner said the matter would first need to be discussed with the House Republican conference before the GOP's direction was decided. -snip- At a closed-door meeting just before the press conference, GOP leadership only briefly touched on the issue to tell rank-and-file members it would be discussed at the upcoming retreat in Maryland, a GOP source said.

An effort by House lawmakers to overhaul immigration policy, which seemed all but dead for much of last year, is about to be revived and take center stage in Congress, with a new push by House Republican leaders and a fresh pitch by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address Tuesday. House GOP leaders are expected to release broad principles to guide the chamber's immigration debate as soon as the coming week. They will include a call to grant legal status to millions of people now in the country illegally, people familiar with the plans say, a...

Recent signals from House Republican leaders that they will pursue their own vision of immigration reform have presented the White House with an opening to achieve a major legislative deal this year that has eluded lawmakers for decades. Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) is expected to release a brief outline of immigration principles to his caucus as soon as its annual retreat next week. The goals would include strengthening border security and creating new visas for foreign workers, while providing a path toward legalizing the status of the nation’s 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants, according to people briefed...

Election Day is almost nine months off. But right now Republicans seem almost certain to hold the House of Representatives and are likely to take the Senate. Which raises the inevitable question: How might the GOP seize defeat from the jaws of victory? Two occasions stand out, two obvious obstacles ahead that could lead to disastrous Republican stumbles, two pitfalls on the path to a happy GOP Election Day. Republicans are pretty good at falling into such pits. One is the increase in the debt limit, which Congress will have to deal with in the next month or two. The...

Immigration: President Obama expects House Republicans to jump-start his presidency by embracing amnesty for illegal aliens. But if it does, the GOP could wreck its chances to take back the Senate. Republicans should own the issue of immigration. After all, the last time — 1986 — the nation took the "comprehensive" approach that Democrats now propose, nothing ended up being fixed in exchange for the amnesty for millions of illegals. And today, insisting on securing the border before doing anything else is no-lose politically. Yet the House GOP is poised to use a piecemeal strategy as cover to enact, more...