John McCain and Jeff Flake dispute Ted Cruz on 2013 immigration bill
Dan Nowicki, The Republic | azcentral.com 12:05 p.m. MST December 23, 2015
U.S. Sen. John McCain is disputing the contention that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was particularly instrumental in defeating the bipartisan 2013 "Gang of Eight" immigration-reform bill.
Cruz, R-Texas, and supporters of his presidential campaign have maintained that his opposition was crucial in derailing the measure, which would have provided a pathway to citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who have settled in the United States as well as invested billions on border security and modernized the visa system.
But McCain, R-Ariz., one of four GOP members of the Gang of Eight, noted that the U.S. Senate passed the bill over Cruz's objections. It failed to become law after the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives declined to act on it.
"Ted Cruz -- I didn't know that he was a member of the House as well," McCain said Monday in a meeting with Arizona Republic editors and reporters. "It's just not true. The bill did pass the Senate of the United States, and Cruz didn't try to stop it (procedurally). Or if he did, it was undetected by me. I'm sure he did with stirring up his base, but not through any legislative activities."
Cruz has been battling with U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., another Gang of Eight member and a GOP presidential hopeful, over whether he ever supported the legalization component in the 2013 bill. Cruz, in fact, at the time was unequivocally opposed to what he considers "amnesty" for undocumented immigrants. He voted against the immigration bill on June 27, 2013, and The Arizona Republic subsequently reported the next month that Cruz's campaign website was hosting an online petition opposing the “fundamentally flawed” legislation.
However, complicating the matter are earlier 2013 comments from Cruz that suggested an immigration-reform compromise was possible if citizenship was "off the table."
Cruz and his allies now say that amendments he offered at the time, such as one that would nix the path to citizenship, were not intended to find that compromise but instead to kill the bill.
"This was done precisely so the proponents of citizenship would vote against it, showing they were in fact insisting on citizenship in their legislation," Amanda Carpenter, a former Cruz aide, wrote on the Conservative Review website. "But now, the Rubio camp is telling folks that because Cruz’s amendment only attacked citizenship, but not legalization, Cruz supports legalization. This is a stretch."
But U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., another GOP Gang of Eight member, told The Republic that Cruz's 2013 quotes about a compromise reflected what many GOP amnesty foes were saying in 2013. Back then, no one seriously was considering extreme options such as mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, as Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has advocated this year, he said.
"And so when Cruz offered an amendment to offer legalization but not citizenship to those who are here now, that was consistent with where most Republicans who weren't supporting the bill were," Flake said. "To say now that he never supported any form of legalization, that, one, doesn't square with what he said several times and, two, it really doesn't square with what the mood and the tenor of the debate was at that time. Virtually everyone was supporting at least legalization."
McCain isn't buying it, either.
"I'm now told that (Cruz's offering of amendments) was some kind of diabolical plot that would undermine the bill," McCain said sarcastically. "Sorry, I'm not Machiavellian enough to understand those machinations."
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