Rubber-Stamping Immigration Reform

[Geee]

National Review:

 

‘Without legislative language,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy declared in a statement on March 20, “there is nothing for the Judiciary Committee to consider this week at our markup.”

The subject of the statement was immigration legislation, and his irritation was understandable.

 

“For months, I have urged the president to send his proposal for comprehensive immigration reform to the Senate,” Leahy noted. He might have added that the White House, with access to the expertise and experience of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, could easily have come up with a draft.

But the president is holding back, Leahy said, “at the request of a few senators who are engaged in secret, closed-door discussions” to prepare a bill they promised “by the beginning of March,” a deadline that “has come and gone.” That was an acerbic reference to the “Gang of Eight,” which well into April has still not delivered a specific proposal.

Leahy had good reason to gripe. Immigration legislation is immensely complicated, with many moving parts, with provisions that can have real-world consequences affecting millions of people. Yet a week later, Leahy promised that his committee would consider whatever proposal the Gang of Eight produces “with all deliberate speed.” To Republican committee members’ request for extended hearings, he decried “artificial delays, delays for delays’ sake.”

[Valin]

National Review:

 

‘Without legislative language,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy declared in a statement on March 20, “there is nothing for the Judiciary Committee to consider this week at our markup.”

The subject of the statement was immigration legislation, and his irritation was understandable.

 

Meanwhile down the hall.....

 

A Gang of Six Plots a Revolt

House conservatives are uneasy about immigration reform.

Robert Costa

4/15/13

 

Representative Steve King, a 63-year-old Iowa Republican, is restless and irritated, and it shows. He’s here, stewing in a hearing room in the Rayburn building, because he and his friends in the House’s tea-party bloc feel disconnected from the debate on comprehensive immigration reform. “A number of us have sat back and watched with amazement as some of our colleagues have leapt to erroneous conclusions,” King says, sitting alongside five other staunch opponents of legalization efforts. “But we are where we are with the momentum in the Republican party.”

 

A few blocks away, Senator Marco Rubio and his colleagues on the bipartisan Gang of Eight, who have lately been on the front pages of the national newspapers, are poised to release legislation that will probably include a pathway to legalization for undocumented workers. Rubio’s work on the issue landed him on the cover of Time magazine in February and has stirred talk of a presidential run. Meanwhile, the tea-party Republicans gathered here have received scant coverage, and scorn from liberals on Twitter, for their opposition to the Senate’s plan.

 

(Snip)

 

Yet in spite of the eye rolling they generate within the Beltway establishment, these six colorful members (Gohmert, Bachmann, and King are frequent guests on cable news) might effectively stymie the Gang of Eight’s quest for a comprehensive package. King and company are preparing to block whatever comes out of the Senate, and they think they, not Rubio, will be the Republicans who shape the debate, especially on talk radio and within the conservative movement.

 

Republicans leaders are paying attention. Sources close to House conservatives say that King is working behind the scenes to sour his right-wing colleagues on the Gang of Eight’s plan, and he made calls over the weekend to finalize his strategy with members and conservative activists......(Snip)

 

 

[clearvision]

The Senate sure seems to be making alot of noise lately on getting some bills thru, but not much on how any of this gets thru the house.

[Draggingtree]

The Senate sure seems to be making alot of noise lately on getting some bills thru, but not much on how any of this gets thru the house.

I'll say the Senate is just waiting on the house leader to cry then they will just float through the house