SEN. CORKER (R-TN) ATTACKS CONSERVATIVE MEDIA ON IMMIGRATION BILL REPORTING



by MATTHEW BOYLE 23 Jun 2013 84POST A COMMENT

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), the co-author with Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) of a new “amendment” that actually serves as a repackaged version of the entire “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, questioned the accuracy conservative media's reporting about the bill on Sunday evening.

On Sunday evening, the Drudge Report featured this headline, referring to the immigration bill: “Senate to Vote on Bill Before Reading it.” The headline, which ran under a photograph of Gang of Eight member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) drinking water, linked to a video ofWeekly Standard editor Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday. In the video, Kristol called on Senators to block the new version of the Gang of Eight bill on Monday to give the American people and senators more time to read the bill.

As Breitbart News reported earlier on Sunday, during the segment Kristol expressed distrust in “the way this bill is being managed” adding that he thinks “there’s no urgency [to pass a comprehensive bill].”
“Can we at least let people read it for a week?” Kristol asked.

“It is not the right way to run a railroad,” Kristol said, adding that this “is not the right way to run Congress.”

In response to such reports, Corker issued a late Sunday evening press release challenging those reports’ and others' veracity.

“I’ve seen reports of a ‘1,200 page bill’ no one has read or had time to read,” Corker said in the relase. “To be clear, the tough border and interior enforcement provisions that Sen. Hoeven and I offered on Friday make up 119 pages added to the 1,100 pages that have been public since May.”

Corker’s statement that this piece of legislation is now is just his and Hoeven’s amendment added onto the pre-existing bill is not entirely true. There are other kickbacks and loopholes laced throughout the text, as Breitbart News has reported. As Heritage Action has detailed, many other senators’ amendments to the original bill were stuffed into this repackaged of the whole bill too, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is moving toward pushing the passage of the repackaged bill out of the Senate by the end of this coming week.

The new version of the bill is 1,187 pages long, so reports of a “1,200 page bill” are accurate as well.

A GOP senate aide confirmed for Breitbart News that the criticisms of Corker and this new bill are accurate, and that Corker’s response questioning the accuracy of conservative reporting are not accurate. The aide called specific attention to how changes were laced throughout the text of the more-than-thousand-page bill, and all of the new changes have still not been identified publicly.

“Unlike the amendment offered by Senator Cornyn, who went to great lengths to work with Democrats to achieve more than another empty promise, this ‘amendment’ promises to result in what Senator Cornyn refused to give in to—on steroids,” the aide said in an email. ”What they’ve introduced is not so much a border blitz as it is a media blitz. The so-called ‘Corker-Hoeven’ amendment is in reality reams of confusing legal language that has real world consequences, and it’s been tucked into various portions of what was already a 1,000 page bill. Even the border security provisions apparently weren’t enough for some senators, given the new carve outs that hand out items on the wish lists of senators who, coincidentally of course, suddenly support the bill.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...dge-s-accuracy