Thread: Man of the Year: Jim Sensenbrenner

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=18622

Man of the Year: Jim Sensenbrenner

by Terence P. Jeffrey
Posted Dec 22, 2006

Lord Acton’s famous observation that power tends to corrupt has been lamentably borne out by the recent history of the Republican Party. When it finally gained control of both the White House and Congress, it turned away from some of the very principles that had secured it majority status.

Yet Acton’s axiom has not been reflected in the behavior of at least one Republican leader in the House of Representatives. He is Rep. James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, who has served for the past six years as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and whom the editors of Human Events have chosen as Man of the Year for 2006.

Conservative Principles

First elected in 1978, Sensenbrenner has served in Congress for almost three decades without setting aside his core principles—and they are decidedly conservative principles. He is a fiscal conservative. He is a pro-life, pro-marriage social conservative. He has been hawkish, but not reckless, in his approach to foreign affairs and national security. And he has a profound respect for the division of powers built into the Constitution.

In this Congress, Sensenbrenner valiantly spurred House Republicans to use their power as the majority party to thwart President Bush’s illegal-alien amnesty plan. At the same time, he effectively promoted serious border security and immigration reform proposals of his own.

Sensenbrenner was able to do this because he has never believed, or acted as if, Congress ought to be a rubber stump for the President. Not when Clinton was President. Not when either Bush was President. Not even when Reagan was President.

In fact, in 1986, when President Reagan made an uncharacteristic mistake and supported the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, which granted an amnesty to illegal aliens, Sensenbrenner voted against it. He feared that it would lead to a new influx of illegal aliens across our Southern border. History proved him right.

In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush cut a deal with congressional Democrats and broke his “Read My Lips, No New Taxes” pledge, Sensenbrenner adamantly opposed the tax increase.

“What is really a shame is that it is all unnecessary,” Sensenbrenner said then, “because, if Congress had just held the federal growth rate of spending to 4% a year for each year of the next five years, we could balance the budget without raising taxes on anyone.”

Sensenbrenner practiced what he preached. In every year since 1992, he has received a grade of “A” from the National Taxpayers Union, which scores every vote cast in Congress that affects taxes, spendng and debt. In each of those years, he has also ranked among the NTU’s Top Ten fiscal conservatives in the House. Sensenbrenner’s commitment to small government has been so steady that even when he committed perhaps the one great fiscal sin of his career—voting for the Medicare prescription-drug plan in 2003—he still managed to rank as the NTU’s No. 9 fiscal conservative in the House.

“Jim Sensenbrenner has been a tireless advocate for taxpayers,” says NTU President John Berthoud, a contributing editor to Human Events. “His record in support of tax relief and cutting wasteful spending is almost unmatched. Very few other members of Congress have ever compiled a comparable record in NTU’s ratings. Wisconsin voters—and indeed all Americans—have greatly benefited from Jim Sensenbrenner’s principled service in the United States Congress.”

While some congressional Republicans have recently committed ethical lapses similar to those they once decried Democrats for committing, The Almanac of American Politics rightly calls Sensenbrenner “a stickler for ethics.” House rules require that members report their assets only in broad ranges of value. Sensenbrenner, by contrast, has gone to the House floor in each of the 28 years he has served and submitted for publication in the Congressional Record a detailed listing of everything he owns as well as all the taxes he has paid.

He lists every asset down to the penny.

His commitment to integrity in government service showed brightly during the Clinton impeachment trial. In the face of ridicule from the liberal press and both Republican and Democratic senators, Sensenbrenner opened the arguments for the House impeachment managers on the Senate floor. At the trial’s end, he summed up why Clinton should be removed.

“When this trial began four long weeks ago, we said that what was on trial was the truth and the rule of law,” Sensenbrenner defiantly told the Senate. “That has not changed, despite the lengthy legal arguments you have heard. The truth is still the truth and a lie is still a lie. And the rule of law should apply to everyone no matter what excuses are made by the President’s defenders.”

The strength of Sensenbrenner’s convictions—his stubbornness in the defense of carefully thought-through right-minded positions—is what enabled him in the 109th Congress to stop President Bush’s illegal-alien amnesty.

He simply would not let it through the House.

Thanks to a coalition led by Teddy Kennedy and John McCain, the Bush proposal sailed through the Senate. But then it ran smack into the U.S.S. Sensenbrenner—and sank.

Sensenbrenner also achieved real progress on immigration policy in the last Congress. He managed to enact serious reforms—despite President Bush’s manifest reluctance to support them.

He pushed through the REAL ID Act that prohibits states from issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens if the states want their driver’s licenses to be accepted for federal purposes such as boarding airplanes. He made sure Congress authorized a doubling of the Border Patrol, tripling of the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and tripling the number of beds available for detaining illegal aliens. He was a leading proponent of the law sponsored by Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R.-N.Y.) and long advocated by Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter (R.-Calif.) that authorized 700 miles of double fencing along the Mexican border.

When President Bush’s budget request failed to fully fund the fiscal-year 2007 installments on the authorized increases in Border Patrol, ICE agents and detention beds, Sensenbrenner worked with other Republican leaders to make sure $2 billion was added to the Homeland Security appropriation for those purposes—and to fund next year’s construction on the border fence.

He also sponsored and won House passage of an enforcement-only immigration reform bill designed not only to secure the border but to turn off the jobs magnet that attracts illegal aliens across the border. This bill would have subjected employers of illegal aliens to serious sanctions enforced by the soon-to-be-increased ranks of ICE agents.

Sensenbrenner’s House bill proved to be precisely the immovable object that sank the Senate-White House amnesty bill.

When Human Events asked him last week if Americans could count on him to be in the forefront of the fight for immigration enforcement in the future, he said: “Jim Sensenbrenner is not going to go away, even though we are in the minority.”

Had more Republicans in the White House and on Capitol Hill over the last few years shared Jim Sensenbrenner’s readiness to fight for principle, the GOP might still be running Congress.

i have to disagree with this one since he lied to two border patrol agents and the American people when he promised hearings in the Ramos Campeon case and said they would take place between the elections and the first of the year and then since he was the judiciary committee chairman,. he DID NOTHING.

i nominate Tom Tancredo instead

Originally Posted by jamesw62

i have to disagree with this one since he lied to two border patrol agents and the American people when he promised hearings in the Ramos Campeon case and said they would take place between the elections and the first of the year and then since he was the judiciary committee chairman,. he DID NOTHING.

i nominate Tom Tancredo instead

Yes, it is as if the repubs were disappointed in the election results and just let this travesty go. I'd like to know Sensenbrenner's reason.

I support humanevents choice of Rep. Sensenbrenner 100%! This man used every trick in the book to sink the senate amnesty bill. We owe him a ton of gratitude for keeping our hopes alive and raining on the pro-illegal immigrant activists/supporters parade.

jamesw62 wrote:

i have to disagree with this one since he lied to two border patrol agents and the American people when he promised hearings in the Ramos Campeon case and said they would take place between the elections and the first of the year and then since he was the judiciary committee chairman,. he DID NOTHING.

Sensenbrenner, while a powerful man, is not God. As for doing nothing in pushing for a hearing in the Ramos & Capeon case - how could you honestly know what he did or didn't do? A lot goes on behind the scenes that we're not aware of. I honestly believe he has done everything in his power to push for those hearings, but he's only one man. Furthermore, the judiciary committee could not have changed the sentences of Ramos and Campeon, regardless of how many meetings they held.

I share your frustration concerning the Ramos and Campeon situation, but Rep. Sensenbrenner is not to blame, nor should he be held personally responsible for anything related to the case. Honestly, I think your anger needs to be directed more at those responsible for the mess, not someone that doesn't agree with it and has probably done everything in his power to aid the two agents.

Remember, if anyone man can be credited with stopping S.2611 from appearing on the presidents desk for signature, it's Rep. Sensenbrenner.

Originally Posted by jean

Originally Posted by jamesw62

Yes, it is as if the repubs were disappointed in the election results and just let this travesty go. I'd like to know Sensenbrenner's reason.

YOU and ME both and i think so would all those who have signed the petitions and made phone calls and demands

MW:

I agree with you as well. Blame should not be going to Sensenbrenner for the BP agents. That travesty needs to be put squarely on the shoulders of those who perpetrated it. That would be Jorge Bush and Alberto Gonzales. The same a-holes who tried to persecute Dog Chapman and leave him to rot in a Mexican jail.

Originally Posted by MW

I support humanevents choice of Rep. Sensenbrenner 100%! This man used every trick in the book to sink the senate amnesty bill. We owe him a ton of gratitude for keeping our hopes alive and raining on the pro-illegal immigrant activists/supporters parade.

jamesw62 wrote:

i have to disagree with this one since he lied to two border patrol agents and the American people when he promised hearings in the Ramos Campeon case and said they would take place between the elections and the first of the year and then since he was the judiciary committee chairman,. he DID NOTHING.

Sensenbrenner, while a powerful man, is not God. As for doing nothing in pushing for a hearing in the Ramos & Capeon case - how could you honestly know what he did or didn't do? A lot goes on behind the scenes that we're not aware of. I honestly believe he has done everything in his power to push for those hearings, but he's only one man. Furthermore, the judiciary committee could not have changed the sentences of Ramos and Campeon, regardless of how many meetings they held.

I share your frustration concerning the Ramos and Campeon situation, but Rep. Sensenbrenner is not to blame, nor should he be held personally responsible for anything related to the case. Honestly, I think your anger needs to be directed more at those responsible for the mess, not someone that doesn't agree with it and has probably done everything in his power to aid the two agents.

Remember, if anyone man can be credited with stopping S.2611 from appearing on the presidents desk for signature, it's Rep. Sensenbrenner.

Watch the videos from the el paso senate border hearings. hes promised hearings on the case between the election and the new year. IF these hearings would have taken place we would have known because people like Lou Dobbs would have been reporting on it. Sensenbrenner is the chairman of the judiciary committee in the house and could have held those hearings any damn time he wanted

jamesw62 wrote:

Watch the videos from the el paso senate border hearings. hes promised hearings on the case between the election and the new year. IF these hearings would have taken place we would have known because people like Lou Dobbs would have been reporting on it. Sensenbrenner is the chairman of the judiciary committee in the house and could have held those hearings any damn time he wanted.

Like I said, I understand your frustration, but I think you're directing it in the wrong direction. I sincerely don't make a habit of breaking promises I make, but there has been occasions where I was left with no choice. Circumstances change and other issues sometimes take priority. I'm sure at one time or another during your lifetime you've had to break a few promises before too (maybe to your children?). Rep. Sensenbrenner is a vital part of the cog, but he is not the cog. Perhaps we should be thankful for all he has done regarding the illegal immigration issue and less demeaning for something he was unable to get done for whatever reason. What I'm basically saying is, take heed of his overall accomplishments to our cause vice attacking him for something he may or may not have had the power to pull together. It is possible he tried like the dickens to hold those hearings, but was unable to gain the support necessary to make it happen by January 1st. He would have looked silly holding the hearings by himself.

Hey, we're on the same team and you have the right to your opinion as I have to mine. We're just going to have to agree to disagree on this issue. Merry Christmas.