Don't be Grubered by Boehner's Amnesty Plan
First they tried to tell us they couldn’t defund Obama’s amnesty. Now, Boehner and his bootlickers are making it clear that they won’t defund it.
...While reporters and pundits will spill copious pages of ink attempting to ascertain the strategy behind this plan, the only words that count are those of the Speaker himself....he downright supports open borders and even told Obama to pull the trigger on his unconstitutional executive action. Everything else is window dressing.
As we noted a few weeks ago, Speaker Boehner told his conference that he personally gave Obama the green light to “do what you gotta do” after the elections in the event that Republicans declined to pass amnesty legislatively.
So what is the window dressing?
They will pass a so-called “Cromnibus” hybrid bill, in which most of government will be funded for the remainder of the fiscal year (through September 2015), while immigration-related agencies will be funded through March. There is no rider attached to the bill defunding Obama’s amnesty within the relevant agencies tasked with executing the illegal act. They think House conservatives are suckers who believe that leadership will fight to defund amnesty early next year when they win back the Senate.
Some conservatives might be fooled by the argument that we will have more leverage if we punt the fight into next year when Republicans control the Senate. But this false sense of hope fails to account for the fact that Boehner agrees with Obama and has no intention of fighting this – ever.
But leadership realized that they needed some sweetener to sugar-coat the lack of an immediate response, so they are passing a stand-alone bill nullifying Obama’s amnesty. Once again, they think we are stupid. Any bill that does not condition the funding for the immigration agencies to a rider defunding Obama’s amnesty is a joke. It will never force the issue, and they know it.
Passing a standalone resolution condemning Obama’s amnesty might have been appropriate on November 20 – the day Obama issued his royal proclamation. Instead, Republicans failed to even lodge a protest, and proceeded to leave town for two weeks. But now that the budget bill is upon us, protests are meaningless – talk is cheap. It’s time for them to execute their constitutional powers of the purse and defund the amnesty programs, including the issuance of work permits and social security cards.
....we will have more leverage if we punt the fight into next year when Republicans control the Senate. But this false sense of hope fails to account for the fact that Boehner agrees with Obama and has no intention of fighting this – ever. They will simply use the reprieve granted to them by conservatives to distract from fighting Obama’s amnesty, or worse, as Grover Norquist and Mitt Romney have suggested, work with Obama to pass legislative amnesty.
If conservative members agree to this plan, they are just as complicit in Obama’s amnesty as everyone else. Don’t be fooled, once this budget bill passes the amnesty will be irrevocable.
Moreover, even if we had a committed conservative majority, we will not have much more leverage than we do now. Even with GOP control of the Senate, Democrats have the ability to filibuster a bill they don’t like, preventing it from reaching the president’s desk. That is true now; it will be true in March. It’s all about having a morally clear message that we will fund all lawful aspects of government except for the illegal amnesty. And the longer Republicans wait to fight while agreeing to fund these agencies, the weaker they look...
If conservative members agree to this plan, they are just as complicit in Obama’s amnesty as everyone else. Don’t be fooled, once this budget bill passes the amnesty will be irrevocable.
Daniel Horowitz is Senior Editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ RMConservative
