Jun 25 2006
GOP Utter Failure IV
While the democrats want to cut and run from Iraq, Republicans cut and run from our border security and left us open to terrorist attack by a stubborn fear of immigrants possibly becoming US citizens in 10-15 years (the so called ‘amnesty’ which only someone with severe obsession would confuse with the liberal goal of immediate citizenship).
Sen Bill Frist attempts again to make some in-roads on this issue in apiece out today in the Washington Times (h/t RCP). He is mostly right, but very wrong in some place. He realizes we need a multi-pronged solution.
Simply strengthening physical border security or beginning a guest worker program will not fix the deep, underlying problems in America’s immigration system. Any bill Congress sends to the president must enhance border security, create an operational temporary worker program, provide for work-site enforcement, and address the status of the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country.
It is a reasonable checkist (though some things overlap). All of these fronts need to be addressed to even have a prayer of working. Those people who try to get just one element passed (i.e., stronger borders) and try to hold off issues they cannot face are kidding themselves. Personally, I am not buying the silver-bullet excuses. I stopped believing in those not long after I realized the tooth fairy is not real.
Fritz points to one of the biggest problems we have right now – workable work-site checks and enforcement.
Workplace enforcement stands atop my list of concerns because it’s a prerequisite to any other type of immigration reform. Right now, employers have no effective way to verify whether an individual has proper permission to work in the United States. Unless we develop an effective work-site system, the economic pull of jobs will lead both illegal immigrants and employers to evade whatever barriers we place in their way. While the Senate bill contains some good ideas, I believe its work-site enforcement provisions need improvement.
Well, the jab that employers are too greedy to check is patently unfair. There is no way for an employer to resoundly determine if someone here is legal. Employers have been saying for decades that if the government would provide the system (like gun owner checks) they would use it. But people who run small businesses do not have the revenues to pay for detectives on every employee.
What I do not grasp is the idea that someone who has paid into Social Security should not get that money back out. It is not hard to believe more than half (if not all) of the people in social security have a record of breaking a law, for example speeding, uninspected car – much more dangerous actions to me and mine than someone working for a living and paying their taxes. In the grand scheme of things a drunk driver is much more of a risk to society than someone working without permission. So are we going to set the precedent that you can lose your social security because you broke a law?
This is the kind of mindless ‘severe punishment’ mentality that tries to equate working without permission with robbery, assault and murder. These punishments will set a precedent that can and will be used by politicians in the future as things that are ‘good for the gander’. We treat people equally here. So laws that apply to one group can be broadened out to apply to all of us at any time. Are we ready to have some bureacrat in DC tell us when we break certain laws they will take all the hard earned money they forced from us originally and now keep it?
Folks, those immigrants who are real criminals need to get the boot. We need to stop releasing immigrant workers (who are indistinguishable from vacationers I must point out) at the border as best we can, but what we really need to do is bring the underground workers into society so that they do not undermine our way of life but join in it. No stick you would not use on yourself for equally bad transgressions is going to be seen as fair and measured. The irony of this one sticking point is this is a case where these illegal workers paid their fair share of taxes, and now some in DC are trying to find a way to punish them for this. We want the tax cheats folks, not the tax payers.
Someone needs to show some sanity on these issues. And soon. We are still completely exposed to terrorist attack from our borders and from within this underground society that has been building up for decades. This was an inexcusable failure by the GOP. Fear of an immigrant becoming a citizen in 2016 or later is no excuse for leaving Americans at risk for terrorist attack today. Any attack that does succeed through this path will be laid on the heads of those who made this mistake.
Addendum: I see the ‘do-nothing’ crowd are still rationalizing the GOPs disasterous blunder. Seems they don’t like the point I keep making and keep looking for cover in polls which mean nothing to the issue. How many people in this country would agree that fear of immigrants becoming US citizens in 2016-2021 is a higher concern or priority than stopping terror attacks here in the US today? Sorry folks, but the American people are not obsessed. Very few minds would conclude it is better to risk a terror attack today (which kills and maims) than risk people whose only crime is making a living becoming US citizens in the far future. The only reason the GOP is not being decimated on this issue is the Dems keep trying to surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq. One party is surrendering and the other party is fixated on immigrants being nationalized in 10-15 years. Neither is thinking straight. Please don’t bother and try and impress me with how correct all of this is. That just destroys your credibility. There is nothing admirable in any of this.
“I stopped believing in those not long after I realized the tooth fairy is not real.”
Oh no! Santa? the Easter Bunny?
Next you’re gonna tell us to not believe in Santa or the Easter Bunny either.
Have you ever seen the eyes of a 4 year old child when he sees Santa for the first time. You gonna tell him it’s not real?
Man you must be in a marching band the way you beat that drum.
“So are we going to set the precedent that you can lose your social security because you broke a law?”
Might wanta do a little research and find out how much Social Security you draw if you are in prison. To save you a little time tho, the correct answer is ZERO.
Oops and you devoted a couple of paragraphs using that argument, well unfortunately, “some bureacrat in DC did tell us when we break certain laws they will take all the hard earned money”
You said: and I ask why?
“Any bill Congress sends to the president must enhance border security, create an operational temporary worker program, provide for work-site enforcement, and address the status of the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country.”
The one thing listed that you will find most people support is border security. Nothing else, so why not agree on that, pass that, get started and one day later start negotiating the other items.
The only thing is enhancing border security has to mean close the border, not add a man per 2000 miles.(which, by the way is more than the Senate bill calls for)
AJ:
I really enjoy your work, but… Illegals don’t necessarily pay taxes or share in the burden of social service costs. I have heard that many hang out at a Home Depot or Lowes and wait for contractors or just plain old home owners to hire them. They work for cash in the black market. No taxes are paid, that’s why they can work so cheaply. Their work can be priced, easily, 30% cheaper than the honest worker paying taxes.
“Seems they don’t like the point I keep making and keep looking for cover in polls which mean nothing to the issue. ”
If they don’t mean anything, why do you incessantly refer to them. I’ll ask again tho, the next time you see one that supports your view, please link to it. I’d like to see for myself. All the polls I see want the border secured and the rest of it is no issue.
I’ll also say again, pass a law that secures the border 100% absolutely and the day it is certified, give citizenship to everyone in the country(just as the present senate bill does) except waive the waiting period. Make it immediate. I’m not afraid of immigrants, I just don’;t want illegal ones.
Aw, Buckaroo
Now you’ve disillusioned me, dag gum it. I would’ve sworn they all were standing there in line to make sure the taxes were being withheld.
Darn it, now I’m gonna have to develope a whole new point of view.
Oh, by the way, thanks for telling me where I can find some cheap labor to paint my house. I wouldn’t have known that otherwise.
AJ, the for enforcement guy is correct. If you have any kind of warrant for your arrest (or if you are actually incarcerated) you cannot receive social security. I know, because it has happened to me. The law changed (well, became effective) on Jan. 1, 2005.
I have an outstanding warrant from Texas (which I am in the process of disputing) and SSA has sent me a demand for all of the payments I have received since then.
Why am I, as an american citizen since birth, less than an illegal?
I just posted on III, and yesterday on the origional in this ongoing series.
I liked this analysis:
May 30, 2006
RUSH: I want to start with illegal immigration. I continue to be stunned by this, but I want to start with a concept. Have you people who have been paying attention to this noticed that the conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is that we’ve got to get a bill? “We have to have a bill! If the Republicans don’t get a bill…” and this is primarily coming — I have to tell you; I’m going to call ’em out here; it’s primarily coming — from the White House spin machine and the Weekly Standard people, Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes and they’re all out there saying, “There’s gotta be a bill! Why, if there’s no bill, why, it’s the end of the president’s presidency! The epitome of lame duck. If he can’t get this done, why, it’s over for Bush.”
For a lot of people it’s already over for Bush when it comes to immigration and a number of other things, and I’m talking about in the conservative base. This notion that we have to have legislation for legislation’s sake is typical thinking from people inside the Beltway who believe that nothing good happens without it first originating in Washington and in government. As conservatives, ladies and gentlemen, this is anathema to us. It is pure anathema, and the idea that a bunch of conservatives are running around saying that, “Well, if we don’t get a bill, if nothing happens — in fact, nothing good can happen unless we get a bill,” and I think it is hilarious how all these people now insist that Congress has to do something, has to do “something.”
Even if it’s damage, even if it’s the wrong thing to do, Congress has to do something — and notice, though, in this whole concept of doing something, nobody is pressuring the Senate to accept the House version. Nobody is pressuring McCain. “Are you prepared to make some compromises with the House?” All the pressure is being brought to bear on the members of the House of Representatives. They don’t pressure the Senate to accept the House version or voters will respond by throwing out senators. They always say, “If the House doesn’t do the right thing here, why, voters are going to throw members of the House out!”
Well, for all of you who think that there has to be a bill in order for something good to happen, it’s time to go back to Limbaugh fundamentals. It’s time to go back to conservative fundamentals. Because this is the kind of thinking that grows government, the kind of thinking that disempowers average citizens, the kind of thinking that causes everybody to get up, and the first thing they do, look in whatever direction for them Washington is and ask, “How are you going to make our lives better today?” When the fact of the matter is they’ve got so little to do with making your lives better, most of that’s up to you.
Like, we love government shutdowns here. We love congressional recesses here. We love when nothing gets done, because odds are no damage is going to occur, and no taxes are going to be increased. No regulations are going to be written. It is classic fundamentalism here. The Weekly Standard is… Let me just read this from Mickey Kaus. Mickey Kaus is a blogger, and he says, “The bogus conventional wisdom on immigration crumbles. How wrong can you be?” he asks. “This wrong,” and then he quotes Fred Barnes from the Weekly Standard in April. “‘The immigration issue has flipped in President Bush’s favor. The public now firmly supports toughened border enforcement plus — and this is a big plus for the president — a system for letting illegal immigrants already in America earn citizenship. … (snip) …
“The ones with the politically untenable position are Democrats who want an immigration issue (but not actual legislation) to use against Republicans in November, and Republicans who want merely to increase border security. The upshot is that an immigration bill appears likely (but not certain) to pass when Congress returns from its Easter recess on April 24 — and probably in a ‘comprehensive’ form congenial to Bush and Republican congressional leaders. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have indicated they back this approach, not a bill simply calling for stronger border security. The turning point came in March.'”
That’s from Fred Barnes, “Bordering on Victory,” Weekly Standard, April 24th. Denny Hastert has flipped on this? Denny Hastert has said he’s not going to bring a vote to the floor unless the majority of his caucus supports it. I don’t know what they’re drinking over there at the Standard. I’ll tell you, you might want to go out and ask some people about this, ladies and gentlemen. You might want to ask people like Chris Cannon what he thinks in Utah. Chris Cannon is an open-borders guy. He had a scary primary. He’s got a runoff. Well, not a runoff. He’s got his general election in June, June 27th, and everybody is going to be watching that election. He’s polling right now 48-28 over his opponent, who is a get tough on illegal immigration opponent, and if Chris Cannon, if he loses this, or just slightly wins it, House Republicans are going to be looking at this and they’re going to be saying, “There’s no way we’re going along with the Senate bill.”
You might want to go out and ask the former mayor of Herndon, Virginia, what he thinks about the conventional wisdom on illegal immigration or ask Congressman Tom Osborne in Nebraska what he thinks. He went down to defeat running for governor in Nebraska because he’s an open borders guy on immigration. We have this from the state of Washington. It’s from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “The Washington state Republican Party has adopted a resolution calling for an end to the Constitution‘s guarantee of automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants. Delegates supporting that platform said their concerns included the cost of public hospitals and expense of welfare for the children of indigent or deported illegal immigrants. ‘I think voters realize immigration is a problem and we are trying to grapple with solutions to the illegal-immigration problem,’ said Diane Tebelius, state GOP chairwoman, of the resolution adopted Saturday with little debate and few dissenting votes.”
So again in Utah we see Representative Chris Cannon face the closest primary of his career on this one issue alone. The sitting governor in Nebraska appointed after the former governor was named agriculture secretary by President Bush, sitting governor won a primary he was examined to lose to Congressman Osborne because the governor vetoes an in-state tuition bill for illegals. In Virginia, we saw the mayor of Herndon and most of the city council wiped out over this issue. There’s a rebellion going on out there within the Republican base, within the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which is its majority.
The people inside the Beltway don’t get it. They’re still stuck on this notion, “Gotta get a bill! If we don’t get a bill, why, it’s bad for the president! Why, why, why, the president will be a lame duck, and it will send a signal to Democrats that a do-nothing Congress can campaign on that.” This whole notion that even if it’s bad, even if it’s a mistake we’ve got to get a bill, is emanating from people who live, work, and breathe, drink, sleep, and drive inside the Beltway where what government does is first and foremost, second most, tertiary, it’s the only thing that matters, what’s happening in government every day, and that’s why there’s a huge disconnect here on this issue between people inside the Beltway and the voters and the citizens of this country.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Over the weekend, I received a memo third hand. I’m not on the direct mailing list. Matthew Dowd, the senior strategist for the Republican National Committee, who has worked for Bush and worked for McCain, sent out this memo to the GOP: (paraphrasing) “Stop Worrying and Love the Immigration Reform Bill in the Senate. Stop talking about how this is the only way the Republican Party can advance, is if the Senate bill is passed, if the House finds a way to compromise with it,” and, I’ll tell you what, folks, what is going on here is real simple. The powers that be in the Washington Republican Party establishment are trying to come up with a way to accommodate both President Bush and Senator McCain, both of whom — well, McCain primarily.
The president’s made some recent immigration speech allusions to border security, but let’s be honest. Used to start talking about border security first and you lose the Senate. You lose the inside the Beltway Republican intelligentsia when you start talking about border security first, and that’s all that really is at stake here. I mean, that’s what people want first. It’s real simple. You know, we get all tied up here defending things, instead of advancing principles. Most of these issues like illegal immigration are far simpler than people would have us believe. Most of the time is taken up unraveling the spin of the other side and clearing out the clutter rather than just advancing principles and that’s because the Republican Party in power, inside the Beltway, has eschewed conservative principles for its own, you know, political hackdom.
So this memo goes out saying, well, the Republicans will go down to stinging defeat, lose everything, including the White House in ’08 unless the Senate bill is passed pretty much intact as is. Now, John Fund today in the OpinionJournal.com section of the Wall Street Journal’s website talks about Chris Cannon, the Utah congressman I opened the program talking about, and how close his race is, and he mentions the other candidates that I have mentioned to you also in discussing the vulnerability that Republicans face from their own base out there, outside the Beltway. He mentions Congressman Mike Pence and his compromise proposal, and as Fund writes about it, he said, “His proposal is already building bridges between the warring immigration camps. Tamar Jacoby, a pro-immigration scholar at the Manhattan Institute, says the Pence approach is a middle ground that bypasses the cumbersome federal bureaucracy. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a fierce opponent of President Bush’s approach to immigration, is also conciliatory. ‘A guest worker program I think can be on the table if it does not contain an amnesty,’ he says.”
So there’s movement out there, but what the Fund piece points out is that Tom Osborne lost. Chris Shays, moderate Republican, is changing his mind on this in Connecticut after having all these town meetings. Chris Shays told Fund that “his recent town-hall meetings in his upper-income district have convinced him he must oppose citizenship for illegal aliens.” I mean, yeah, I’m not kidding. This is all being missed by the people inside the Beltway. So what Fund’s piece here is an attempt to do is to position Mike Pence’s suggestion that compromise is something that will work and save people, but this still misses the point because it’s still founded in this notion, “There has to be a bill.” Legislation for legislation’s sake. That whole idea is just, as I say, folks, it’s anathema. The idea that we have to have a bill just because we have to have a bill, even if it was bad, to me it would be hilarious if it weren’t so onerous, what is being talked about here.
By the way, the Washington Post, want to go back to what Fred Barnes wrote back in March talking about how Hastert had flipped and is now on the president’s side in this whole thing. There’s a piece I guess in Sunday’s Washington Post, “Republican House members facing the toughest races this fall are overwhelmingly opposed to any deal that provides illegal immigrants a path to citizenship — an election-year dynamic that significantly dims the prospects that President Bush will win the immigration compromise he is seeking, according to Republican lawmakers and leadership aides. The opposition spreads across the geographical and ideological boundaries that often divide House Republicans… Despite some national polls showing strong support for a comprehensive solution of the sort favored by Bush, nearly every GOP lawmaker interviewed for this article said the House plan to secure the borders and enforce existing immigration laws is unquestionably the safer political stand in his or her district. Many Democrats from vulnerable districts say the same thing, although the Democratic Caucus as a whole is more sympathetic to a Senate-style compromise.”
Well, of course they are. It’s a pathway to more Democratic votes. It’s a pathway to the eventual destruction of the Republican Party. That’s what’s so nonsensical about this. Yesterday on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Steve Scully, the host, talking to the editor and chief of the hotline, Chuck Todd. Scully says, “How will the immigration issue play out this year, Chuck?”
TODD: I tell you, I don’t think they’re going to come up with a deal. I think House Republicans in their own mind think this is their opportunity to excite the base. You have Rush Limbaugh going on the air saying forget the Senate, folks, the House is the only place where there are any conservatives left in Washington, and they’re the only ones fighting on immigration. I think these guys are going to use this as a wedge to make sure, because they think at the end of the day they can’t win without the base turning out, and they’d rather kowtow to the base on this and fire them up and figure that they’ll try to win with 51%.
RUSH: And, you know, there’s an addendum to this. Why is the House conservative Republican caucus, why are they so up in arms? There’s a whole bunch of reasons, and you could throw in the William Jefferson office raid here to explain some of the actions. The House leadership feels totally sold out by the White House on a number of issues. In the first place, Porter Goss. Porter Goss, a huge friend of Denny Hastert’s. He was thrown under the bus by the president, despite promises to Goss that he would not be dispatched in this way. On Iraq and illegal immigration, two issues that the House Republicans are most afraid of this November. House leadership has not gotten any help from the White House.
In fact, to the contrary, the House is hanging tough against the Senate amnesty bill, and the president sent Rove up there to try to talk the guys in the House out of their position on this. And then you have the situation with the William Jefferson search, and it all just came to a boil. But the notion here that the House is on the verge of compromising with the Senate, it’s just the exact opposite. And Chuck Todd pretty much has it right here, as does the Washington Post, amazingly so. That the conservatives in the House who are in touch with their base — you — understand entirely what they face should they do the wrong thing. It is not the case that legislation for legislation’s sake will save the Republican Party at the polls this November or 2008. Doing the wrong thing and in the process ignoring the expressed will of millions of Americans is what will do great damage, perhaps irreversible.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Don’t forget what I told you last week, folks. I sized this immigration bill up, and when I was making jokes about it, I was closer to being right than I even knew at the time. I ought to take advantage of my own example. Every time I make a joke about something or somebody it seems to always come true. In this case the joke was that we were looking for extended numbers of Democrat voters and the Democrats needing new victims, and, lo and behold, that’s what this bill is, the Senate side of this. It’s not even about immigration per se as we have always known it, but there’s something else going on here, too. As we know the liberals are doing their best to destroy conservatives.
That’s their game, and that’s predictable. I think the Republican country clubbers and blue-blooders are trying to do the same thing, are trying to ace out conservatives. I think there is a deep resentment among the Republican elites, and has been since Reagan took over the Republican Party and made it a conservative party, there’s been a deep resentment for the fact that so many conservatives are Christians, evangelicals. They’re pro-life. These things are embarrassing to the elites who have to go to these cocktail parties and defend their association with these kind of hicks. In light of this, I want to go back and play Chuck Todd’s question and answer, his answer to Steve Scully from C-SPAN’s Washington Journal again. Listen to this.
TODD: I tell you, I don’t think they’re going to come up with a deal. I think House Republicans in their own mind think this is their opportunity to excite the base. You have Rush Limbaugh going on the air saying forget the Senate, folks, the House is the only place where there are any conservatives left in Washington, and they’re the only ones fighting on immigration. I think these guys are going to use this as a wedge to make sure, because they think at the end of the day, they can’t win without the base turning out, and they’d rather kowtow to the base on this and fire them up and figure that they’ll try to win with 51%.
RUSH: Now, what’s wrong with this? What’s wrong with this is this whole notion that conservatives, the House conservatives are going to try to use this as a wedge because they think at the end of the day they can’t win without the base turning out, and they’d rather kowtow to the base. Notice that listening to your boss, listening to the person who elects you, listening to the person you represent, is kowtowing. Now, what this means is that inside the Beltway we are all thought of as a bunch of hicks and a bunch of hayseeds. We have to be “kowtowed” to. We have to be “pandered” to and so forth. Well, the truth is, we didn’t pick this fight. We don’t look to create a wedge issue here. We are not into wedge politics. We’re standing on principle. This is what conservatives do. We have long-held positions about the rule of law, long-held positions about border security, long-held positions about limiting entitlements.
There’s so much wrong in this Senate bill that offends our principles and our sensibilities. We don’t believe in expanding government as conservatives. We don’t believe in legislation for legislation’s sake. We don’t believe in expanding entitlement programs and the social safety net. We’re for reducing it because that’s real compassion when it comes to human beings teaching them to fend for themselves, those that are capable of it. Border security is a principle. It’s not a wedge issue, for crying out loud. Without a border you don’t have a country. Whenever conservatives take a stand we are said to be looking for hot-button issues or wedge issues, and the people that talk about us have no clue who we are and what we stand for even after all of these years.
Don’t get caught up in the same mind-set that the inside-the-Beltway crowd gets caught up in, folks, because it’s something that’s entirely foreign to — well, not entirely. But it’s largely foreign to the hubbub and the daily activity of everyday life in this country. If anybody is out of touch and if anybody is trying to wedge anybody, it’s the Senate, led by Senator McCain and the missteps that have taken place in the White House on this and other Republican elites who want to cast us as restrictionists, nativists and all that. As I say, things are much simpler than they usually appear to be. This is an issue about border security and it’s not being dealt with. It’s just that simple. All this other stuff is, “Well, we got a labor shortage. We need keep this labor.” We can deal with that but we’ve gotta have border security first.
I say, “Well, let’s do it all at the same time.”
“You can’t do border security and wait a couple years.”
“Yes, we can. It’s a principle. It’s the right thing. It is what’s the best thing to do, is to secure the border, especially when you look at the sad sack state of the Mexican economy.” There is nothing down there that’s going to stop these people from heading this way other than our own border security. Here’s Carol in Kirkwood, Missouri, near St. Louis. Great to have you on the program, Carolyn.
CALLER: Thank you. I agree with everything you just said. It’s completely right on, and I’m calling for two reasons. The first one is that I am so mad at this whole John McCain issue. I think he is a totally dangerous person. I resent the fact that the rest of the Republican Party has to kowtow to him, and I wish there was some way we could rise up and get rid of him or let the Republican Party know we’re not going to go for this placating whatever John McCain wants.
RUSH: There is. It’s called the presidential primary. That’s not going to get rid of him as a senator, but if you’re worried, it’s called elections. That’s how it happens in this country.
CALLER: Well, I agree.
RUSH: If he’s in the primaries in the 2008 presidential you and others will have a chance to express your just-expressed preference.
CALLER: Well, we’ll have to wait ’til then. But the other thing, I don’t hear anybody talking about but I think you mentioned earlier today that somebody was talking about is that I don’t think nine out of ten of the immigrants, the illegal immigrants that are in this country today came here because they wanted to be citizens. They came here to earn some money and improve their economic lives. I don’t know why everybody is worried about giving them citizenship. They didn’t even want that in the first place, and I think they would be just as happy if we just left them alone, the ones that are here, and let them earn money and pay taxes or go home or whatever and just forget about the whole citizenship thing.
RUSH: I think there is a certain element of truth in that. As judging by some of the protests that have occurred, the people on those protest marches have essentially asked to be exempted from US law, how dare we stand up for our own laws and enforce them against them.
CALLER: Yeah, they have no respect for us or our laws or our system. They don’t have any respect at all. So I don’t even think they deserve to be citizens, and I think if you come into this country illegally, you ruin your chances of becoming a citizen, period.
RUSH: Well, you should.
CALLER: That’s how it should be.
RUSH: I mean, you should, and you’re making judgment if they’re here illegally they’re here illegally and therefore trying to game the system and therefore not really trying to become citizens. Those who want to immigrate and become citizens go through the legal channels to do so. I don’t know for sure how many illegals there are in this country, and so I find it difficult to, on a grand scale, impugn them and their character. They, when you boil this down, are not the problem here in the sense of solving the issue. Nothing else in this is relevant right now except for border security, and the fact that so many people don’t care about that is troubling.
It’s problematic, and those people who elected officials who don’t really care about border security are going to have to face their voters at some time on that issue and they will find out just as Chris Cannon has found, just as Coach Osborne found out, just as Chris Shays in Connecticut is finding out from his town hall meetings. I’ll tell you what, if a moderate, liberal Republican in Connecticut is hearing about this from his wealthy moderate Republican constituents and Democrat constituents, then I guarantee you it’s an issue hotter in other parts of the country. But I think, you know, here we go.
Mike Pence — and I love the guy, but he’s come up with this compromise bill to bridge the gap between the House bill and the Senate bill, and I fear its purpose is to come up with a way to accommodate Bush and McCain, they are the two ranking Republican principals in this, and I’m sure there’s some thinking, “My God, we can’t let them go down to defeat on this! Why, what would it say about him? Oh, my gosh, if the president loses this, why, this is horrible!” So we’ve got to come up with legislation for legislation’s sake. So the political class is aligning to protect itself here down the road and under the rubric of legislation for legislation’s sake. Why, why, we have to get a bill. That’s what’s now guiding this on the — I guess, what would I say? — the pro-illegal immigration side of this.
Again, I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but this is fundamental, and it offends me greatly. This notion that only with legislation can decent things or the right things happen, could we look at recent Senate action and take a look at just how well it panned out. Sarbanes-Oxley is not panning out very well. How about McCain and Feingold and their campaign finance reform? Whenever the Senate puts reform, comprehensive reform in something, go back and look at it, and you tell me if what happened is what was supposed to happen in the legislation. It was not, and it hardly ever is, particularly when it comes out of this massive Senate reform blah, blah, whatever follows that, legislation for legislation’s sake is not the answer to serious problems.
One more from America’s Anchorman before I head out for work:
June 2, 2006
RUSH: All right. This is hilarious: (story) “The long-fought Senate immigration bill that opponents say grants amnesty to 12 million illegal aliens is unconstitutional and appears headed for certain demise, Senate Republicans now say.” Here is why, “A key feature of the Senate bill is that it would make illegals pay back taxes before applying for citizenship, a requirement that supporters say will raise billions of dollars in the next decade. There’s just one problem: The U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits revenue-raising legislation [taxes, tax cuts, what have you, has to come from the House] from originating in the Senate. ‘All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,’ according to the ‘origination clause’ in Article I, Section 7. Republicans — including the bill’s supporters — say this will kill the bill, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he’s offered a simple solution. He wants to attach the immigration bill to a tax bill that has already passed the House.”
So this immigration bill will become a giant amendment to a tax bill that’s already passed the House of Representatives. “It would then proceed as planned to a ‘conference committee,’ where negotiators” would try to work out their differences. But what’s fascinating about this is that Dingy Harry, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, says he’s not going to “go along with that fix.” He said yesterday “that the concerns raised by Mr. Frist and House Republicans are ‘technical in nature’ and can be ignored.” Unconstitutionality is just a technicality! This is from an idiot who couldn’t understand the ethics rules and took complementary boxing tickets.
What next, folks? John McCain’s going to be turned to for constitutional advice à la the First Amendment? What a great irony. Senator McCain, we found out that the bill you and Senator Kennedy wrote is unconstitutional. (McCain impression.) “What? It’s not. It’s not. It’s not! I wouldn’t put it in there if it was. It is? It is? Ah, well, fix it. We’ll fix it. Simple.” (Laughing.) I say, “Don’t fix it.” Challenge in court and then throw out. Folks, this is Sixth Grade elementary understandable. Especially for these wizards, these guys are all smarter than the rest of us. Does this give you confidence that these senators know which end is up as they remake our society?
Any idiot, folks, knows that tax bills and spending bills have to be initiated in the House. Some people are speculating now, ladies and gentlemen, that Harry Reid’s intransigence on this is purposeful, that Reid doesn’t want to fix the bill, that Reid doesn’t want a bill at all. There are theories abounding that the purpose for his intransigence is so that the bill gets killed because he’s part of the conventional wisdom that believes if there’s no bill, why, that’s the end of the Republican Party. It’s the end of President Bush, because it will show that Bush can’t govern. He can’t lead his own party in Congress, and that the Republicans leading Congress can’t govern, can’t get anything done. See? The whole theory rests on the notion that unless they pass legislation for legislation’s sake, even if it’s the worst piece of legislation in the last number of years, if they don’t pass it, why, why, it’s horrible! Why, we’re not doing our jobs. I’m telling you, if this bill fades away into obscurity, it will be one of the best things to have happened to the country and its future in a long, long time. I don’t know what’s going to happen with this, but I couldn’t resist passing this on to you because it’s just primo.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Open Line Friday rolls on, and Northport, Alabama. This is Steve. Welcome, sir, to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, dittos from a 14-year-listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Just wanted to talk a little bit about the unconstitutionality of this immigration bill. Truth to tell, I think our moderate Republican friends and the Democrats have looked around at all these primaries that are going on, and seeing these pro-illegal immigrants getting their heads handed to them I think they finally came up with a way to weasel out of actually voting for the bill, and they can go back home to the folks they were pandering to and say, well, we really wanted to do this immigration bill, but that pesky little Constitution wouldn’t let us do it.
RUSH: Well, you know, the problem with that is that if they do that, they make themselves look even stupider than they did when they wrote the bill because any sixth grader knows that spending and tax bills have to originate in the House. Now, if they really care (interruption). Yes, they should! (interruption). Well, a sixth grader should know that. I guarantee you this. These guys in the Senate should have damn well known it. I don’t care about every sixth grader, but you know that they did. They might have forgotten it; it might have been an oversight. I don’t think that this is a way to get the bill killed. This is an embarrassment to these guys.
Here is Senator McCain — campaign finance reform, John McCain; the Straight Talk Express. Apparently these guys don’t even read the legislation, is one thing this might point out. Number two: the others don’t even know what’s in it even after they’ve written it. They can’t go out and say, “Well, you know what? We put something in there and the pesky little Constitution screws all this up,” because this is easily fixed if they want to fix it. You take it out. You take it out. What we’re talking about, if you’re just joining us, folks, this immigration bill in the Senate grants amnesty on back taxes to illegal aliens. They’ll only have to pay three out of five years in back taxes.
Okay, you can have whatever opinion you want on that. But the Senate can’t pass a bill that has that kind of provision because that is a tax-and-spend or a revenue generating provision, and those can only originate in the House. So this goes to conference. It’s gotta come out. Now, Dingy Harry says, “Well, it’s just a technicality. It’s not a big deal. I refuse to have it out.” Now, Dingy Harry may want to keep it in so he can kill the bill, but he wants to kill the bill because he thinks the Republicans and President Bush will be forever creamed if they don’t get legislation on this. Typical liberal Democrat. The only thing progress is defined by is if we get a bill.
They cannot for the life of them understand that no bill here is a good thing as opposed to what this bill would be if it were passed. Now, there’s room here for a good bill, but this ain’t it. This isn’t it. I only say “this ain’t it” when kids are in school and will not be influenced by it, but school is out in most places now, so I apologize for that. Dingy Harry doesn’t want to take it out. But, folks, the thing you really have to look at here. Here’s John McCain who already with one piece of legislation screwed up the First Amendment, campaign finance reform — and now here’s another one, that’s written with either arrogance, ignorance, or total disregard for the Constitution.
Bill Frist, so he wants to save it. Here’s what we do. We simply attach this bill as an amendment to a tax bill that’s already passed that came from the House, and therefore that provision will stand. The simple thing is to take this out. Why in the world do these people get amnesty on back taxes? If I were William Jefferson (Democrat-Louisiana), or if I were Tom DeLay, or if I’m anybody under indictment, you know, I’d point to this bill, and I’d say, “I want the same treatment that 20 million illegals are getting in the United States Senate. They’re being given amnesty from identity theft; they’re getting amnesty from not having to pay back taxes. How come you’re coming after me? I’m a servant of the American public. I have done great things. I came from abject poverty. I came up from dirt and dust — and you want to put me in jail, and you’re going to let these people go scot-free, and they haven’t accomplished diddly-squat compared to what I’ve accomplished. I’m a servant of this country.”
I can just hear it now. It’s a rhetorical point. Congressman Jefferson would never make it, but whatever happened to equal protection? There’s an equal-protection clause in the Constitution, too. Whatever happened to that? So I don’t believe the people who wrote this bill want this bill to go by the wayside and have there be no bill. Some of them might, but I don’t think McCain wants that, I think McCain wants the bill. I think Ted Kennedy wants the bill. I think Hagel wants the bill. I think Mel Martinez in Florida wants the bill. Obviously Bill Frist wants the bill. So this would be easy to fix, without going through this rigmarole of attaching this whole monstrosity as the amendment to a House tax bill that’s already passed. You just take it out.
It won’t survive in the House conference anyway precisely for constitutional reasons. By the way, do you recall, ladies and gentlemen, when we first reported to you via Jeff Sessions, senator from Alabama, and Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, based on their independent analyses of the Senate bill, the numbers of immigrants, legal and illegal, that would flood this country in the next 20 years? The range was anywhere from a hundred to 200 million. People said, “That’s outrageous, why, that’s silly, why that’s the whole population of Mexico, common sense says that can’t possibly be the truth.” Well, people that read the bill looked at it and came up with it. So they changed the bill, modified some provision, and those numbers of a hundred to 200 million reduced to 60 to 90 million.
“Well, that’s still outrageous. Anybody would look at this and see this can’t possibly be true, it’s just scare tactics, I can’t believe people would abandon their own common sense to believe scare tactics.” Then Robert Samuelson earlier this week writing in the Washington Post said: You know what? I just found, and it’s been out there for anybody in the media to find, the White House own analysis of the Senate bill, and their number is between 40 and 60, and how come the media hasn’t been reporting this? Well, easy. The media’s agenda is to get the bill passed, pure and simple.
Today, in the Washington Post: Senate Bill Would Add 20 Million Legal Immigrants, report Says. Seems like this large number of immigrants, regardless of the number, is true, folks. Once again, on the cutting edge of societal evolution here on this program. You are, if you listen, doing the job the mainstream media used to do. Here it is almost a week afterwards, and the mainstream press and the New York Times still hasn’t gotten to it, just arriving at the details of what the legislation actually means. Remember, we went through a list of things that the AP had as highlights in the bill, and they left out this whole identity theft provision.
They just totally left it out. It’s not that they investigated it and saw it and said, “Oooh, can’t put that in there.” They relied on press releases from proponents of the bill to tell them what was in it and reported that. Or repeated it. They’re stenographers. (story) “The nation’s population of legal immigrants would increase by nearly 20 million over the next decade if the recently passed Senate immigration bill becomes law, and taxpayers would spend more than $50 billion to operate a new guest-worker program and pay for extra welfare, Social Security and public health-care costs, according to a Congressional Budget Office report.”
Everything we told you on this program about the bill finally now shows up in the Drive-By Media. “The report, the first definitive look at the impact of the Senate bill, was commissioned by the Senate Finance Committee and was submitted on May 16, nine days before the measure was passed. The study has been embraced by the Bush administration and the bill’s supporters, but opponents said crucial omissions greatly lowered its population and cost estimates.” Probably true there. But still, even with this conservative analysis, two million people a year, legal and otherwise, brought into this country and the increasing pressure on our social services programs.
So the truth is out now, folks, and it’s going to be real fascinating to watch this conference committee. One point that Steve made: I think it’s a little soon for some of these guys to be noting what’s happening in these primaries out there, there’s just been two or three of them. Chris Cannon coming up on the 27th of this month in Utah, that will be an interesting one to watch, and that will be going on probably during the conference negotiations. So that will get their attention. But there is a rebellion brewing out there on this, and the people in the House know it, and the Senate doesn’t care because they don’t have to face voters, most of them. The ones that are promoting this bill and all for it, they’re not going to face the voters, and even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. Ted Kennedy? He’s not going to lose an election because of this bill up in Massachusetts, so it doesn’t matter. But the House takes the temperature of the American public on issue after issue because those guys and gals have to, you know, face the voters every two years.
Santorum on the Border [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Pittsburgh, PA – U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, today introduced the Border Security First Act.
“Throughout the debate on immigration reform, I have consistently stated that the first thing we must do is secure our nation’s borders,†said Senator Santorum. “The Senate recently passed the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006, which I did not support for a number of reasons – mainly because it did not appropriately address the problem at hand. While the House and Senate are working to come to an agreement on the broader issues in the immigration bill, I am introducing the Border Security First Act today because our borders must be secured now – not later. In the post 9/11 world we live in, our national security depends on our border security. We need to know who is coming into our country, where they are from, and what they are doing here.â€
The Border Security First Act will provide increased assets for controlling the United States borders including more inspectors, marshals, and border patrol agents on both the northern and southern borders. The bill calls for increased surveillance, new checkpoints and ports of entry, and increased fencing and vehicle barriers – all in an effort to control the U.S. borders.
The Border Security First Act calls for a comprehensive national strategy for border security, information exchange between agencies, increasing the capacity to train border patrol agents and combating human smuggling. The bill would enhance initiatives on biometric data, secure communications for border patrol agents, and provide Customs and Border protection officers with additional training and identifying fraudulent documents.
Additionally, the Border Security First Act would temporarily deploy the National Guard to support the border patrol in securing our southern land border. The bill would also increase punishment for the construction of border tunnels or passages and provide relief for cities, counties and states dealing with increased costs because of illegal immigration.
“First things first – we must secure our nations borders. Securing our borders means securing every point of access into our country, whether that is by land from Canada or Mexico, through our airports or through our seaports. I am glad to be joined today by Senators Johnny Isakson (R-GA) and Jim Talent (R-MO), and hope that my Senate colleagues will join me in recognizing the urgency of addressing this issue without delay,†said Senator Santorum.
Here’s the text of the bill.
Posted at 12:22 PM
Looks like you are preaching to the wrong choir AJ…. on your own blog no less.
You know where I stand, along with THE MAJORITY of Americans who want the problem fixed…. correctly.
Enjoy your attempts to persuade the majority, though not convining, it is entertaining.
http://tinyurl.com/hmmkw
this is where the majority of americans stand……….this has nothing to do with the strawman of anti citizenship, amnesty or any of the other canards the senate bill supporters malign their opponents with. the folks that support the senate bill have not read it.
Here is what I think is most likely to happen:
Nothing
Second most likely:
Democrats at some point get enough votes in Congress to grant immediate amnesty. So I agree with AJ, all this bandwidth wasted on arguing positions is going to be moot. The Democrats will grant amnest and pick up another 10 million votes, mostly in Californa and Texas ensuring their hold on American politics for a long time because the “Fundamentalist Conservatives” refused to compromise on the issue.
And note that when I say “Fundamentalist Conservatives” it has nothing to do with religion in the churchgoing sense, it has to do with people who hold political views as a “religion”. Their political positions aren’t based on logic, they are based on emotion and “faith” that their position is the “correct” one despite any logical argument otherwise.
Sveve:
Why are you wasting AJ’s bandwith with all that? Use a link and if someone wants to read it they can. I don’t. My eyes glaze over. BTW, Rush is not an authority on this. Tony Snow had to tell him that illegal entry is a misdemeaner, he did not even know that much about it.
The thing that I have wondered about with the social security is the legality of not giving it to people who paid in. I mean, the employers did not pay people cash under the table, they were paying into the system like they thought they were supposed to. Is it legal for the government to keep the money if not for the purposes it was paid? REally, isn’t there some precedent for this?
And as for people with a warrant not getting social security, this is not about people with a warrant. It is my understanding that this is about people who have paid a fine and come forward to do what is necessary to gain legal status.
I don’t think it is important enough to kill a bill over but I think that as usual the anti immigrants are acting like the world will come to an abrupt halt if they don’t get their way here.
At least Frist is trying to do something constructive that might help resolve the issue, Tancredo is just turning into a loon.
And crosspatch is right, Republicans have a majority now and while the’ shoot and stack like cord wood on the border’ crowd might not get everything they want, they should consider getting as tough a compromise as they can. Because if they don’t deal with this the Democrats will.
What I think is interesting is all the people who bitch about Bush on this and say Clinton did a better job with the border etc, but in the same breath bitch about a compromise because it means letting people like Kennedy be part of the process. Well, what was Clinton if not a Democrat?
crosspatch,
you must be talking about the losers in the senate. the folks in the house just want to close the border first. after that everything is possible. the senate does not want to close the border. read the bill. i’ve been hearing the same BS out of the senate for over thirty years now. they count on folks like AJ to buy it hook and sinker so nothing will ever get done. then they blame the house ! never forget this–the dems do not, under any circumstances, want to close the border. everything in the senate bill is not enforceable and they know it. every provision would never make it out of court. but their real goal would be accomplished. the border would stay open. all the high tech jib jab does nothing to stop illegals crossing the border. only a fence does. talk to the border patrol.
seal the border–air tight. then we can talk about everybody’s favorite earmark. everything else is bullsh*t to keep the border open. read what these people think.
http://tinyurl.com/hmmkw
there will be a compromise. there will be a fence and then there will be amnesty/citizenship. jobplace enforcement will only start after everyone has been given a greencard–if you start with enforcement first you will have millions of unemployed. this enforcement first is another senate canard…..100’00’s of small businesses will go bankrupt.
http://www.weneedafence.com/images/Fence_Idea.jpg
patrick:
I am not a big supporter of the Senate Bill, I just want a realistic solution. I resent seeing these do nothing hardliners cherry pick things they do not like about the bill and complain about them, mischaracterize them and then do nothing. If they don’t like it they should go to conference and try to get the stuff out of the bill, not put on a road show.
If I followed your link right it lead me to that letter signed by conservatives. What has that got to do with what most people want? Most Americans are not even self identified as conservatives.
Most people appear to agree with Bush on this. They want increased border security, a guest worker program, some sort of resolution the status of people here and tougher enforcement. The response to Bush’s speech was positive because he talked about those things.
Most people do not seem to think these are mutually exclusive and do not seem to be looking at it in an either or kind of way. This should not be that difficult,really.
The antiimmigrant people seem to think you have a wall and nothing or just plain nothing because you can not have a wall and a guest worker program.
I don’t think the wall will work without a guest worker program to take pressure off of it and I don’t think the guest worker program will work without a wall or some sort of increased enforcement. I think they would be mutually beneficial to the long term goal of dealing with all of this.
btw, we only have PEW’s word for how many folks are even here. Sometimes I wonder if they just kind of make it up as they go along.
My point is most Americans think we can walk and chew gum at the same time and really do not have a problem with a comprehensive plan so long as things get done. And there are ways to appropriate the money to see to it that enforcement is beefed up without undue delay, but they have to get off their asses and pass a bill.
So far the people who are the most insistent we have that wall are the reason we don’t have a bill. I have to admit after every thing I have read I don’t understand the pigheaded obsessive need to have it their way the hardliners have on this issue.
I am beginning to think crosspatch is right, nothing will happen. There will be no bill, until the hardliners are outnumbered enough by the Democrats to get a bill through…and you guys will like that even less.
Think about it for a minute, please. What the Senate bill did was effectively place CURRENT illegals, ones that had already been here for a considerable period of time, on 10 years probation before they could get citizenship. There was also the requirement that they learn english and pay at least some of back taxes that otherwise would never be collected. Some percentage of something is a lot more than 100% of nothing.
I also resent this notion that migrants are somehow more likely than other residents to be involved in crime. I say horsecrap. San Jose, California has a huge population of illegals relative to other cities. We also have the lowest crime rate of any city of its size in the country. We call ourselves “The safest big city in America”. Know why? Our police department decided to stop being “stuck on stupid”. Recognizing that illegals tend to be victim of crimes because they are afraid to report them, we realized that people exposed to crime in their daily life often turn to crime themselves. So our police hired spanish speaking officers and went into the communities and eventually convinced them that their first priority was maintaining law and order. In exchange for reporting crimes, the police would not act as immigration enforcement. Our police do not ask for immigration status from witnesses or others reporting crimes or talking to officers unless that person is the subject of a criminal investigation. Result? Crime plummeted. By recognizing that a certian thing exists rather than shoving one’s head in the sand and approaching that community’s people in the same manner as you would approach any other community in the city, they can actually help become part of the solution rather than the source of problems. What it takes, though, is a willingness to think out of the box and try something different than your gut instinct might tell you to do. There was quite a lot of reluctance to approaching things this way, but it worked and nothing succeeds like success.
10 years propation is not “easy street”. Hey, any idea how many of our troops in Iraq right now are migrants and not US citizens? Quite a lot. You might be surprised that many of our wounded service members are granted US citizenship for their sacrifice to this country. These people, for the most part, are just ordinary people that have risked quite a lot to give their kids a better life.
I favor the 10-year plan. I also favor fencing the entire border (with several legitimate crossing points). I would also favor development of industrial and transportation infrastructure that improves the economy of Mexico so they don’t come here in the first place. In order to do that, though, step one is getting rid of their corrupt police and the drug gangs.
(tongue in cheek)
What we should do is allow Mexico to annex the US. We have 300,000,000 people, they have 100,000,000. On the first election we can elect George Bush as President and change the name to The United States of America and build a much shorter fence across the Guatamala border and start getting Canada to work on annexing us to make The United States of North America … and we can give Quebec back to France.
terrye,
my point has consistently been the same since march. without a fence first everything else is “been there done that”. this is the same jib jab they trot out every 10 years. read all the bills since LBJ. every one called for a fence, right up to and and including barbara jordon’s commission 1990-1995. nothing ever gets done–now somwhere between 10 to 20 million illegals heading toward 30 million when we have the same stupid debate in 10 years. the link i provided above is not about “conservatives” , it’s about people who want the border sealed first and then we all can talk.
the question i have for you and others is why you won’t seal the border first. all you make is excuses , excuses. i can only be left with the conclusion that you don’t want it closed. you always connect it with other proposals that have no chance of making it out of the courts. i have been listening to such double speak for 30 years now. absolutely none of the senate proposals will ever make it out of court. think prop 187.
if you want a bill, sign on to closing the border first–the senate rejected this amendment. after the border is closed everything will then be on the table.
crosspatch:
Did you read Broder’s piece at Real Clear politics? I don’t often agree with him, but he had a point here.
He is saying that attitudes toward immigration tend to be regional and mentioned that Bush’s background as a Texan has shaped that.
I think there is truth in that. Attitudes are regional, but the policy needs to be national.
I just think the road show they are planning will only do more harm than good. I mean come on, if I were hispanic, and a citizen and could vote I would be getting the distinct idea that these people hate me. Bad long term strategy.
I hear a lot of people parrot the “fence first” proposition. What I want to know is why? What difference does it make? If a comprehensive bill is passed, fence construction could begin immediately. There are plenty of military engineering units that could use the training. It would take a year or two to get all the regulations concerning the other programs set and published. In effect we WOULD have a fence first.
When I hear cries of “fence first” what I really hear is “Lets demand something that will never get through the Senate so we can prevent anything at all being done”. In other words, that kind of talk actually sabotages any action at all.
What reasonable people would do is accept the current Senate bill, with some compromise, to be sure, but not enough to torpedo it, and then work in subsequent years to tightening it up. This bill does set aside money for a lot of fence this year. More can be set aside *next* year and the years following. There is nothing that says this law is the be-all and end-all for ever and ever. It can be modified, added to, subtacted from, etc. going forward. People wanting a perfect bill the first time through congress are doing what they can to prevent anything at all from being passed and I believe that is their real agenda because there are *billions* of dollars of tax-free money being made the way things are now.