Archives for July 2013

Iowa Rep. Steve King says the House of Representatives should pass no immigration bill to avoid a terrible bill coming out of conference, pro-immigration Republicans are operating under a false premise and he wants House Speaker John Boehner to be more clear on what he would allow to move forward on the House floor.

King joins other conservative House members who believe they could never support a bill that is embraced by Senate Democrats so trying to find common ground now is fruitless.

“If the House passed border security and interior security and sent that over to the Senate, Harry Reid is not going to take that up.  Chuck Schumer has said that citizenship has to be part of the deal.  It’s not going to go to the president’s desk, so why would the House take up anything if there’s no prospect that we’re going to improve the immigration situation, just the prospect that they’re going to jam amnesty on us,” said King, who says the Democratic agenda is transparent.

“It is about documenting undocumented Democrats.  Jay Leno was right.  That’s why every Democrat supports this, and that’s why Republicans should step back and wonder why it is that Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama are trying to help the political futures of Republicans.  They are not,” he said.  “We’re better off not to pass a bill out of the House because we leave ourselves vulnerable, plus we don’t accomplish anything that’s good.  I don’t want to bring anything through the House.  I don’t want to do that until we have at least a Republican majority in the United States Senate again and probably a president in the White House that has respect for his own oath of office.”

King says he’s pleased to see Speaker Boehner vow never to bring the Senate immigration bill up for a  vote and require a majority of Republicans to support any House version of the bill.  King says Boehner’s language is more encouraging as of late but the congressman remains uneasy about Boehner’s careful language about other scenarios.

“When you get into allowing an amendment that doesn’t have (majority GOP support), what about a conference report that doesn’t have, his language has not been as clear.  I can say it clearly without having to sit down and think about it.  If I were making this call, and I’m not, there will be no immigration legislation coming to the floor, no amendment allowed and no conference report allowed that doesn’t have, at a minimum, a majority support of House Republicans,” said King.  “Hopefully, we’ll be able to hear that from our leadership in the next week or two.”

The path of the debate in the House may well be established next week at a closed-door meeting of House Republicans.  King is hopeful that a majority of members deliver a loud, clear message.

“I’m hopeful that enough members will stand up and say we’re not going to get enforcement with this president.  I’m not going to support anything that legalizes because it’s a path to citizenship.  I’m not going to vote to expand legal immigration because once you do that there’s no place to stop.  Let’s get it under control first.  I hope that’s what we do,” said King.

In addition to the Democrats, King and his allies are squaring off against some traditional allies, including groups like the Chamber of Commerce and popular conservative leaders like Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who holds a position very similar to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in support of Gang of Eight style legislation.  King says he has great respect for those lawmakers and organizations, but he believes they are making some critical errors in judgment.

“They either do not study, remember or accept the real history of this and that’s the 1986 amnesty act.  Then they want to deny that the Senate bill is amnesty and Paul Ryan has said he’ll debate anyone who thinks this is amnesty.  He says it’s not.  I defined amnesty long ago and I’d be happy to have that debate.  I don’t know they come to that conclusion and call themselves conservatives,” said King, who noted a Heritage Foundation study showing the Senate version of reform would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion.”

King says Ryan and Rubio are smart and likable men but they start from the wrong point on this issue.

“If they start with a flawed premise, the smartest of people will still end up with the wrong conslusion.  The flawed premise is that there’s an economic benefit to legalization and that there’s a political benefit to Republicans to legalization.  Neither one of those is true.  In fact, it’s the exact opposite,” said King, who says despite the assumption that Hispanic voters would embrace conservative principles on abortion, marriage and the free market, multiple surveys show Hispanics overwhelmingly backing the liberal positions on those issues.

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Some Americans call it the 21st century gold rush.  Innovations in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling have expanded the oil and gas market, producing jobs and contributing to economic growth.  There is now enough readily available oil and gas to power the United States for up to 200 years.

But experts debate whether the boom will continue and if the environmental costs might outweigh the economic benefits in the long run.  At least seven states report changes in the quality of their drinking water after fracking began.  States like New York and New Jersey respond to these fears by placing moratoriums on fracking.  Vermont banned it altogether.

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss President Obama’s decision to delay implementation of the ObamaCare employer mandate to 2015.  They criticize Mohamed Morsi’s response to Egyptian protests.  And they laugh at Dennis Rodman’s incredulous claim that he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

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Texas Gov. Rick Perry was right to call another special session of the state legislature in response to boisterous pro-choice protesters disrupting the end of the previous session to kill pro-life legislation, according to State Sen. Brian Birdwell, who also defended the bill as beneficial to women and babies.

Gov. Perry called a second special session for lawmakers after a chaotic end to June’s special session.  Democratic State Sen. Wendy Davis held an 11-hour filibuster that Republicans were finally able to end through procedural measures.  However, the final vote on the bill was delayed by persistent protests from pro-choice activists in the gallery.  The vote to pass the bill was not finalized before the midnight deadline.

“Kind of like a visiting team coming into Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, the noise can be so loud that you’ve got to use hand and arm signals,” said Birdwell.  “So you have noise level and conduct akin to Occupy Wall Street sitting in the gallery that prevented us from concluding the legislative business that we had been gathered to do.”

Gov. Perry wasted little time in ordering a second special legislative session.  Birdwell says it had to be done.

“I was certainly very pleased he did and even more pleased that he did so the next day.  This type of mob rule was not going to be tolerated.  We’re going to come back and take another swing at it,” said Birdwell.

Most of the attention in this debate has been on the push to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but there are three other critical provisions that Birdwell clarified.

First, he says the legislation requires any doctors performing abortions to have hospital admitting privileges to a facility with an OBGYN department.  The purpose, he says, is so women will have access to emergency care if necessary and so that any child who survives an abortion can immediately become a patient, especiall those older than 20 weeks but meeting the standards for certain exceptions.

The bill also mandates higher standards for abortion clinics and requires them to meet the same guidelines as an ambulatory surgical facility, another upgrade Birdwell says can only be beneficial to women.

“Today, there’s’a higher standard for the medical care provider to remove tonsils at an ambulatory surgical center than there is to perform an abortion.  This would raise it to that standard for an outpatient surgery center,” said Birdwell.

In addition, doctors who administer the abortion drug RU-486 to their patients will be required to maintain contact with those patients through the course of that treatment due to the risk of heavy bleeding.  The final component of the legislation addresses the limits for how late an abortion can legally be conducted.

“The bill prohibits, with certain exceptions, instead of at six months or later in the third trimester, it moves it from six months to five months because that is the delineation of the child feeling pain in the womb,” said Birdwell.

So how does Birdwell interpret the ferocious pro-choice opposition to the plan?

“I think it’s just any restriction, any at all, it viewed as territory that that side of the aisle doesn’t want to cede, even though we know that life begins at conception.  All these standards that we’ve put in place were for the life of the mother, the health of the mother, and, should there be a complication, the health of the child who is born alive,” said Birdwell, who adds that a woman’s choice is not impacted by this legislation and neither is any provider so long as they meet the new standards within a reasonable amount of time.

Sen. Davis says she will not filibuster the bill in this new session, in part because she would have to filibuster for an entire month this time.  That means the legislation is very likely to pass.

“I would assume and agree that a filibuster is very much a long shot.  I would always be very guarded against guaranteeing something will happen.  I think the probabilities that this will pass are very strong,” said Birdwell.

If passed, the law would take effect September 1.

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America discuss today’s good, bad, and crazy martinis!  Texans strongly support bill banning most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.  Syrian rebels behead a Roman Catholic priest. The government spends more than $167,000 of taxpayer dollars to boost turnout at four Washington, D.C. farmer’s markets.

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Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Trey Gowdy for rejecting New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s assertion that Republicans will benefit politically from passing the Senate immigration bill.  They also react to reports of repeated deception from the intelligence community about the extent of government surveillance of Americans.  And they’re stunned by how little media coverage there is of massive Egyptian protests.

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