Thread: Conservative Republican lawmakers lambaste McConnell on immigration

Conservative Republican lawmakers lambaste McConnell on immigration








By Scott Wong - 01/21/15 08:44 PM EST

House conservatives are taking aim at a new target: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Tea Party lawmakers on Wednesday directed their ire at the Kentucky Republican after Senate leaders signaled they don’t have the votes to pass a House-approved bill that would fight President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

It’s a new tack for the Tea Party members in the House, who have repeatedly criticized Obama, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) and Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).House lawmakers say their conservative allies in the Senate have a responsibility to force the upper chamber to aggressively challenge Obama’s actions. But the most pointed attacks were directed at McConnell, who took over the top Senate job just two weeks ago.

Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho), a Tea Party favorite, went so far as to suggest that if McConnell and Senate Republicans aren’t willing to stand up to Obama, maybe they should hand back power to Reid.

“It’s uncanny to me that our leadership … is already sending the message that we’ve already lost this battle,” Labrador said Wednesday at a gathering of conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

“It’s high time that Mitch McConnell stand up and say, ‘this is what we are fighting for in the Senate,’ ” he added. “That’s definitely what he said during his campaign, so let’s make sure he does it now as the majority leader.”

At a bicameral GOP retreat last week, McConnell said Senate Republicans would “try” to pass the aggressive House bill, but made no promises. In fact, in a closed-door meeting at the Hershey, Pa., retreat, McConnell told Republicans that the political reality was that the House bill could not win the 60 Senate votes needed to defeat a Democratic-led filibuster, said lawmakers who were in the room.

Republicans control 54 seats in the Senate.

What is especially galling to Tea Party lawmakers is that McConnell acknowledged defeat before the fight had really begun.
Asked for comment, a McConnell spokesman referred back to the leader’s remarks in Hershey that the Senate would attempt to approve the House-passed measure.

The bill that cleared the House last week would stave off a shutdown next month of the Homeland Security Department (DHS), funding it through September. But the legislation would also block funding for Obama’s plan to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, as well as overturn his 2012 executive order that let millions of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children remain in the country.

Obama has vowed to veto anything that challenges his unilateral actions, and many Senate Republicans don’t want to jeopardize a Homeland Security shutdown by tying appropriations to the controversial immigration provisions.

The intraparty feuding is nothing new, but it comes at a time when McConnell and Boehner are trying to demonstrate that newly empowered Republicans can govern after being the minority party in Washington during the Obama years. McConnell also has one eye on the 2016 election, when Republicans will defend 24 Senate seats to the Democrats’ 10.

The conservative attacks on McConnell also undermine Boehner’s efforts to reassert his power following Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, in which the president vowed to veto any Iran sanctions bill amid tense nuclear negotiations. By Wednesday morning, Boehner had publicly invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to talk about the threat from Iran before a joint session of Congress next month, but GOP divisions over immigration quickly crept into the news cycle.

Boehner has long had to contend with raucous conservatives in his conference, and Reid has been a favorite punching bag of conservatives for years. But after just two weeks leading the new Senate majority, it’s McConnell who’s now facing the wrath of Capitol Hill conservatives. They’re particularly peeved by reports that GOP leaders are now eyeing a backup plan that would separate DHS funding from their efforts to fight Obama’s immigration moves.

“The answer to every offered suggestion is, ‘No, we can’t do that. No, we can’t take on the president. No, that will never work,’ ” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said at the same “Conversations with Conservatives” event, moderated by the Heritage Foundation.

“We didn’t promise we were going to cop out. Plan B always seems to be not taking on this president.”

Even conservative Senate allies weren’t immune from criticism from their House counterparts.

Both Labrador and Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) called on fellow conservatives, including Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), to use Senate procedural tactics to force a vote on the House bill.

“It’s also high time that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and others decide that they are going to start fighting in the Senate,” Labrador said.

Salmon recalled Paul’s nearly 13-hour filibuster in 2013 when he protested against using drone strikes to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. The Arizonan suggested if Paul and the others are serious about fighting Obama’s immigration actions, they should show “leadership” and carry out a talking filibuster and hold up business on the Senate floor.

“I’m speaking to our conservative counterparts on the Senate side who have said time and time again that you and the House need to do this, you and the House need to do that,” Salmon said. “Well, you know what? Now it’s in the Senate, and they have an opportunity to shine and do their job, and I hope they do. ...

“Instead of just saying the House is the wall of last defense, that’s a cop-out,” Salmon continued. “It’s time for us all to be doing everything that we possibly can to force the president to do things in a constitutional way. ... One person [in the Senate] can foul up the whole place — I’m anxiously awaiting to see how they do it.”

http://thehill.com/homenews/house/230360-house-conservatives-lambaste-mcconnell

As it has been for at least 12 election cycles we still are not seeing any action bringing meaningful change. But I am not surprised because I refuse to believe or believe in either of the major parties!

Mitch McConnell must do more to support all Republicans who oppose illegal immigration and want its adverse consequences rolled back which means we must insist that our laws are enforced by all agencies of the federal government and states are allowed to exercise their constitutional rights to pass state immigration laws and use their state and local law enforcement personnel to enforce federal and state immigration laws.

Number of police

In 2008, federal police employed approx. 120,000 full-time law enforcement officers, authorized to make arrests and carry firearms in the United States.^[26]



The 2012 Bureau of Justice Statistics' Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies (CSLLEA), found there were 17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies employing at least one full-time officer or the equivalent in part-time officers.^[27]



In 2008, state and local law enforcement agencies employed more than 1.1 million persons on a full-time basis, including about 765,000 sworn personnel (defined as those with general arrest powers). Agencies also employed approximately 100,000 part-time employees, including 44,000 sworn officers.^[27]



From 2004 to 2008, overall full-time employment by state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide increased by about 57,000 (or 5.3%). Sworn personnel increased by about 33,000 (4.6%), and nonsworn employees by about 24,000 (6.9%). From 2004 to 2008, the number of full-time sworn personnel per 100,000 U.S. residents increased from 250 to 251.^[27] From 1992 to 2008, the growth rate for civilian personnel was more than double that of sworn personnel.^[28]




Local police departments were the largest employer of sworn personnel, accounting for 60% of the total. Sheriffs' offices were next, accounting for 24%. About half (49%) of all agencies employed fewer than 10 full-time officers. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of sworn personnel worked for agencies that employed 100 or more officers.^[27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enf...mber_of_police

You see, there are almost 9 times as many state and local law enforcement officers as there are federal, which is fine, that's the way it should be. The problem is denying states and local law enforcement agencies the freedom to exercise their rights and perform their duties to enforce our laws, including US immigration law. There is no difference between enforcing a federal drug law than a federal immigration law. In fact, the consequences of not enforcing US immigration law are far more disastrous to our citizens and treasury than drug offenses. Americans must wake up to this simple fact.

Also, local and state law enforcement agencies have ample time and resources to enforce US immigration law, and they are the best suited to do so because they know who the violators are, where they are and what they're doing, something the feds have claimed for years they don't know as excuses not to enforce the laws.

According to FBI statistics:

Overview

• Nationwide, law enforcement made an estimated 12,408,899 arrests in 2011. Of these arrests, 534,704 were for violent crimes, and 1,639,883 were for property crimes. (Note: the UCR Program does not collect data on citations for traffic violations.)
• The highest number of arrests were for drug abuse violations (estimated at 1,531,251 arrests), larceny-theft (estimated at 1,264,986), and driving under the influence (estimated at 1,215,077).

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...rsons-arrested

If there are 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers making approximately 12 million arrests per year, (not sure if this figure includes federal arrests or not so to be conservative I'm not including the federal personnel), the average annual arrest record for state and local police officers is approximately 15 persons per year, slightly over 1 per month, and over 35% of those were for drug, dui's, larceny-theft and other property crimes.

So, who doesn't believe that our state and local law enforcement agencies have the personnel and resources to enforce US immigration law? No rationale thinking being with at least 2 live brain cells connected would believe they don't. Therefore, the only sensible, rational, intelligent solution to the failure of the federal government to enforce US immigration law is for the states to use their existing personnel and resources to enforce these laws, limiting the use of federal law enforcement to deploying their personnel to enforce when and where for whatever reason, the states fail to do so.

There is nothing wrong or broken with our immigration system. There are no insurmountable issues or reasons for this disaster other than the complete failure of the federal government to do its job, because too many of our officials are on the take with the cartels. So, it's time to face the wall of reason and climb the mountain of success to solve this problem by taking the simple step of allowing states to exercise their rights to enforce US immigration law for the simple reasons that they 1) have the personnel and resources to do so, and 2) they know "who they are, where they are and what they're doing".

And yes some states may claim that they need money from the federal government to do this. Actually, no they don't. They already have ample personnel and resources to do this, and they will more than make up for any additional costs they might incur from time to time through the savings in reductions in state and local spending on education, welfare, healthcare, Medicaid, other crime and unemployment insurance and new earnings through rejuvenated economies from lower unemployment and reflated wages and salaries.