Summer recess is underway for the House of Representatives without any votes being taken on immigration legislation. That’s fine with opponents of legalizing millions of illegal immigrants, but the lack of action might well be the deliberate strategy of GOP leaders hoping to get a comprehensive bill passed this year.
The National Journal reported this week that House Speaker John Boehner initially wanted something passed before the August recess but then decided to delay the House action to help members avoid a backlash at town hall meetings.
“If they were to do that, they would be violating the Speaker’s absolute promise that he would not bring a bill to the floor that didn’t have the support of a majority of the Republican Party,” said Gohmert, referring to the so-called Hastert Rule by which leadership requires majority support within their own party before moving on any legislation.
That common understanding of the Hastert Rule seems to be getting a new interpretation from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, an ardent supporter of reform. At a town hall this week, a constituent blasted the the GOP over the Hastert Rule and demanded House action on the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill.
Ryan insists he doesn’t want a comprehensive package, but several smaller bills that accomplish the same goals. But he offered a much different method for applying the Hastert Rule.
“Bringing these bills to the floor, we’ll find out,” he said. “It is not, ‘They don’t some to the floor unless we have a majority of the majority,’ because we don’t know if we have a majority until we vote on it.”
Gohmert says that is not the understanding House Republicans have.
“It doesn’t sound like it’s being understood equally by everybody,” said Gohmert, who has high regard for Ryan but says the two are occasionally on “extreme opposite ends” of an issue from time to time. He specifically cites the 2008 debate on the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) in which Ryan strongly backed the Wall Street bailout and Gohmert vigorously opposed.
“There were some good, free market, common sense solutions with giving one bozo from Goldman Sachs $700 billion to go spend like he wanted to,” said Gohmert. “And I think there are better solutions here than what they’re talking about.
“There’s no sense talking about legalization of anybody until you control your own border because you’re inviting people to do exactly what they’re doing, and that is come in numbers 3-5 times more than they were before,” he said. “Secure the border and quit talking about legal status until it’s secure. Then we’ll get this stuff worked out.”
Another blow for border security advocates came this week from Arizona Sen. John McCain, a member of the Gang of Eight, who indicated that he would work to greatly reduce the Senate plan for 20,000 new border agents when the issue heads to a House-Senate Conference. Gohmert says he highly respects McCain’s service to this country, but is disappointed at the senator’s approach to this issue.
“He just doesn’t get it,” said Gohmert. “When you keep trying to do a bill that deals with people illegally in the country and you still haven’t secured the border, then there’s no use having a bill. The president has the money, he’s got the manpower, he’s got the ability, just like Woodrow Wilson did when he completely secured the border.
“He could do it if he wants to and we don’t need to have the administration and people like Senator McCain saying, ‘OK, we’ll put this in the bill and allow him to extort legalization for people that are illegally here or citizenship for people that are illegally here in return for him finally doing the job he is sworn to do,” said Gohmert.
The congressman isn’t sure how big of an issue immigration will be at town hall meetings around the country this month. He says people want the border secured but are otherwise focused on bigger issues.
“They want tax reform like we’ve promised for years. Let’s go to a flat tax. Let’s throw out the IRS,” said Gohmert. “People want to know what happened at Benghazi. People don’t want their government doing any more spying than they are. Those are the issues that I’m hearing more from, except for those that are getting paid to make a big deal out of trying to legalize people that are illegally here.”
