A common ploy in parliamentarian scheming is for leaders to hand out hall passes for vulnerable members to vote against leadership’s proposal, knowing that it has the votes to pass anyway. The rationale is that those members should be able to hoodwink their constituents without compromising passage of the bill. This dynamic usually plays out with the leadership and rank-and-file of the same party, but during today’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup, it was Chuck Schumer who was handing out hall passes to Republicans.
Throughout the past week of marking up the amnesty bill, the Republican gang members on the committee – Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham – were voting together with the Democrats against amendments that would strengthen the enforcement mechanisms to trigger any amnesty. However, on some of the more embarrassing amendments, the two Republicans have been voting the right way. After all, Democrats have enough votes to defeat those amendments without their participation, so why make them look bad with the rubes in the GOP base? We long suspected collaboration between the Democrats and these members, but today Chuck Schumer gave away the secret.
Senator Jeff Sessions, who has been a statesman on this issue, offered an amendment to bar illegals from receiving refundable tax credits during the “RPI” amnesty status. Remember, that advocates of the gang’s bill are incessantly denying the fact that these people will receive benefits during the first 10 years of the amnesty. Well, every Democrat affirmed what we already know by voting to retain those benefits. Except, in this case, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake voted with Sessions and the Republicans. If you watch the roll call (at around the 3:05 mark), you can hear Chuck Schumer asking an aid “do our Republicans have a pass on this one?” The aid says, “yes.”
Hmm…later in the day, Chuck Grassley offered an amendment to bar gang members from receiving amnesty. This amendment was also defeated along a party-line vote…without the help of Flake and Graham. I guess that was embarrassing enough for them to warrant a hall pass from Schumer. Same goes for Cornyn’s amendment which would bar amnesty for criminal aliens , including domestic abusers, child abusers, and drunk drivers, all of whom could potentially get legal status under the Senate bill.
Somehow I don’t think that voters in South Carolina and Arizona elected Graham and Flake to serve as a puppy dog for Chuck Schumer.
If this doesn’t illustrate for you what is wrong with the whole framework of this amnesty bill, I don’t know what will.
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