Radio America Online News Bureau

America Backs 20-Week Abortion Ban, Wolff’s Haley Smear, Hillary’s Grammy Cameo

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Alexandra DeSanctis of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are deeply disappointed that the Senate is unlikely to pass a bill banning the vast majority of abortion past 20 weeks of pregnancy, but are heartened that most Americans support the restrictions, including a majority of Democrats and a majority of women.  They also hammer “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff for his sleazy efforts to suggest that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is having an affair with President Trump and they praise Haley for her clear and dignified denials.  And they roll their eyes as the Grammy Awards telecast shoehorns Hillary Clinton reading an excerpt from “Fire and Fury” into the show, a move made even more baffling in this #MeToo environment by recent reports that the 2008 Clinton campaign took no action against Hillary’s faith adviser for sexual harassment.

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Trump Blasted from Right Over Immigration Blueprint

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Immigration policy conservatives are giving President Trump’s immigration reform blueprint a thumbs down after the plan moves to the left on two key issues, leaving activists fearing a more timid final bill and no end in sight to the dangerous flood of illegal immigration into the United States.

The Trump framework focuses on four key areas: spending $25 billion on border security including additional portions of a wall, extending legal status and a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million illegal immigrants who either enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program or are eligible for it, limiting chain migration to only spouses and minor children, and ending the visa lottery.

The Center for Immigration Studies, or CIS, sees two major problems with Trump’s more moderate approach: a sudden embrace of amnesty and a refusal to tighten the screws enough on chain migration.

CIS Research Fellow Andrew Arthur says Trump’s offer of a pathway to citizenship goes far beyond the DACA recipents and will ultimately include way more than 1.8 million.

“We’ve seen similar proposals in the past.  There have been amnesties floated, amnesties passed.  Inevitably, the number of people who end up being granted is higher than the number that was anticipated.

“Inevitably there is going to be a certain level of fraud in this process.  Logically, you’re going to have to identify that you’ve been in the United States since a [certain time] and the documents you can offer are generally fairly vague,” said Arthur.

And by including illegal immigrants who are not part of the DACA program, Arthur says Trump is inviting a bureaucratic nightmare for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

“If it was simply the 690,000 DACA people, USCIS already knows who those people are and can do a one to one match.  When you’re talking about an additional 1.1 million individuals, that’s going to require brand new files being opened, documents being reviewed, and the fact is USCIS just doesn’t have the bandwidth to do that work right now,” said Arthur.

Arthur is generally pleased with the movement to limit chain migration, keeping it to spouses and minor children, as opposed to current law which allows adult children, siblings, and parents.  However, he says Trump is making a big mistake in how he wants to implement the plan.

“The problem is that the framework will also make these changes prospectively, not retroactively.  It’s going to process through the four million people who are currently in that backlog, people who have had petitions filed on their behalf and who are awaiting a number in order to apply and go through the process of being vetted,” said Arthur.

“That’s a pretty big concern of ours because of course you’re going to end up potentially giving an additional four million people status,” said Arthur.

But while some conservatives are wary of Trump’s plan, most Democrats are greeting Trump’s policy retreat with full condemnation.

“Dreamers should not be held hostage to President Trump’s crusade to tear families apart and waste billions of American tax dollars on an ineffective wall,” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who says Trump is reaching for a hardline immigration agenda on the backs of young people.

Arthur is not surprised.

“That’s just plain sanctimony.  I could have anticipated what Dick Durbin was going to say and I could have written it myself,” he said.

Democrats and liberal immigration activists accuse Trump of clamping down on legal immigration because of his efforts to limit chain migration and kill the visa lottery.  But Arthur says there’s a very good reason for imposing limitations.

“The proposals set forth in the framework are necessary changes that we need in order to ameliorate the problems that got us here to begin with.  The fact is there are huge loopholes in the law that allow unaccompanied alien children to show up at a port of entry.  They don’t even have to enter illegally.

“Once in the United States, United States government officials complete the work of the smugglers that brought them to the border to begin with and reunite them with family members or friends or other individuals in the United States who will take care of them.  This is a huge problem and it’s a huge magnet that draws minors to the United States,” said Arthur.

Why is that a huge problem?  Arthur says that magnet leaves kids vulnerable to unspeakable horrors at the hands of their smugglers so long as the parents of those kids think their children are virtually guaranteed a chance to live in the U.S.

“The people who engage in these activities don’t simply smuggle people for money.  The fact is they rob, they rape, they hold people ransom for money.  They do that with children as well.  Turning off that magnet is an absolutely crucial element of any plan that’s going to grant any kind of amnesty to any population of DACA people,” said Arthur.

Arthur sees positives and negatives for the political path forward on immigration.  He’s deeply concerned that Trump’s willingness to compromise at the outset will ultimately lead to a far worse bill.

“Inevitably, bills like this are a race to the bottom.  If you say (you’re going to allow) 1.8 million people who got here on X date, why not people who got here on X date plus one year, or (if we accept) people who came here below the age of 16, why not people who got here below the age of 18,” said Arthur.

At the same time, he says some House conservatives are not happy with Trump’s plan and may be able to improve it.

“There are some individuals in the House who are vociferously opposed to any plan like this.  You can anticipate that those individuals will attempt to pare back the amazingly generous proposal that the president has made,” said Arthur.

While he has serious problems with Trump’s concessions, Arthur says Democrats are foolish to demonize a major outreach on Trump’s part.

“Quite frankly, if the Democrats don’t take this deal and end up scuttling it, this is going to be on their heads,” said Arthur.

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Trump Doesn’t Fire Mueller, Left Freaks Over DACA Concession, Left Coast Lunacy

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David French of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America are amused by the media frothing over President Trump allegedly trying to have Special Counsel Robert Mueller fired seven months ago, while largely overlooking the fact that Mueller wasn’t fired.  They also discuss President Trump’s major concessions on amnesty in his his immigration legislation framework – concessions that haven’t stopped his critics from accusing the president of being a white supremacist who is tearing apart families.  And they throw up their hands as the majority leader in the California State Assembly proposes penalties of six months in jail or $1,000 fines for any waiter who gives a customer a plastic straw without being asked.

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Humans Now Accused of Making the Earth Cooler

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After insisting for more than three decades that human activity was driving the earth’s temperatures to dangerous levels, climate scientists and activists now contend that same activity is keeping us artificially cool and that cleaning up our atmosphere will leave us feeling the heat.

On January 22, an online article for Scientific American makes the claim that certain parts of the pollution created by human behavior are actually preventing us from feeling the impact of the other emissions we spew into the air.

“Pollution in the atmosphere is having an unexpected consequence, scientists say—it’s helping to cool the climate, masking some of the global warming that’s occurred so far.  That means efforts worldwide to clean up the air may cause an increase in warming, as well as other climate effects, as this pollution disappears,” wrote Chelsea Harvey for the Scientific American story.

“New research is helping to quantify just how big that effect might be. A study published this month in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters” suggests that eliminating the human emission of aerosols—tiny, air-polluting particles often released by industrial activities—could result in additional global warming of anywhere from half a degree to 1 degree Celsius,” added Harvey.

So after years of telling people their activity is responsible for the climate we experience, climate activists are now claiming our behavior is responsible for not feeling what we’ve supposedly caused?  Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher C. Horner is not buying it.

“To put it gently, it is a more recent, if recycled, way of trying to explain how their lurid climate projections have not come to pass,” said Horner, who also served on President-Elect Trump’s landing team at the Environmental Protection Agency during the transition.

“They’re now saying, ‘My models, which I said were OK, on which we were supposed to base economic policy…were actually wrong.’  That’s what they’re saying here.  They’re just saying, ‘My models are wrong and this is my excuse,'” said Horner.

He says the climate change movement is scrambling to explain dire predictions that simply have not materialized.

“All of the claimed warming has failed to arrive.  There seems to have been a several-decade plateau, Yes, we have El Niño and La Niña Years, but the projected warming hasn’t occurred,” said Horner.

Horner says these supposed experts are flailing and now claim any weather event is directly related to human activity throwing the planet’s climate off course.

“In just 2014, the New York Times wrote ‘The End of Snow.’  They do this every mild winter.  Then severe winter returns with a vengeance and a great sense of humor and they write ‘More Snow in A Warming World, the Science is Clear.’  That’s an actual headline, just a year after writing ‘No Snow in A Warming World, the Science is Settled,'” said Horner.

And he says it’s not just an issue when winters vary in severity, noting the same response happens with natural disasters.  Horner says former Vice President Al Gore responded to the devastating hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 by proclaiming that the climate problems he warned us about had arrived and the destruction we saw was the new normal.

For more than a decade after that, no major hurricanes made landfall in the U.S..

“So the lack of hurricanes was somehow attributable to catastrophic man-made global warming.  ‘Which time are you lying?’ I suppose is the question.  The increase in storms, the absence of storms, is it everything?  Even when it’s just right, Goldilocks, is that because of your faith in catastrophic man-made global warming?” asked Horner.

And he says faith is exactly the right term to use for the climate change movement insisting every climate shift and weather event proves their point when none of their projections come true.

“It’s a non-disprovable hypothesis, which means it’s a faith.  Their religion requires them to reach for whatever happens outside the window,” said Horner.

“Nothing they’ve ever proposed would detectably impact the climate.  This is something I come back to every time because the rest is just this increasingly bizarre sideshow,” said Horner.

Horner says environmental activists and academics routinely tie themselves in knots on these issues, including President Obama’s last EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy.

“(She) testified that there would be no impact on the world’s temperatures from her rules.  Then after Boston’s most severe winter two years ago, she said, ‘This most severe winter is because of carbon dioxide.  If you let these EPA rules stand we won’t have these storms anymore,'” said Horner.

He says the polar bear scare turned out to be another dud.

“As a famous EPA memo I found said, ‘Make it about children struggling to breathe.  That’s what people care about because the polar bear stories aren’t persuading people,'” said Horner.

“As you know, polar bear populations plummeted from somewhere below 5,000 to nearly 30,000, so that one had to go,” laughed Horner.

But what about this new claim that human activity is creating greater aerosol levels that mask the true damage to our climate?

“What we’re now hearing is, ‘The reason it’s not as warm as we promised is because of aerosol pollution.’  It’s something of a paradox for them because which is it that you want to address?” said Horner, who believes this is yet another effort to control the narrative and advance political goals.

“Do you want cleaner air?  That’s not what global warming is about by the way.  Global warming is about controlling the reliable, affordable, abundant energy sources,” said Horner, noting that the certainty of the scientists masks just how much they want to change our lives.

“You cannot impact the world’s temperature.  Their models agree on that.  You’re talking about 1900 levels (in the amount of emissions prescribed).  The old PBS show about the house on the prairie, not ‘Little House on the Prairie’ but ‘Prairie Living,’ that’s what you’re talking about.  You know, the good old days of drudgery, disease, and infant mortality.  What a throwback,” said Horner.

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Brighter House Outlook for GOP? Why Would Trump Talk with Mueller? Kerry 2020?

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America cheer up a bit following Jim’s exhaustive study of all the House seats held by retiring Republicans, a report which concludes the vast majority of those seats are likely not in danger of flipping to Democrats.  They also wonder what President Trump would possibly have to gain by talking with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who seems plenty eager to pounce on process crimes as much or more than crimes directly related to the purpose of his investigation.  They have some fun with the news that former Secretary of State John Kerry told a Palestinian official that he is “seriously considering” a 2020 presidential run.  And they get a kick out of reports that the ill-fated XFL appears to be making a comeback in a couple of years.

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Tax Cuts Triggering Major Boom? Left Coast Libs Push Tax Hike, Meehan’s Mess

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America welcome comments from Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan suggesting the recent tax bill will trigger “massive new investment” in the United States, likely leading to economic growth and more jobs.  They also skewer a plan from two state Democratic lawmakers in California who are pushing a ten percent tax hike on businesses making more than a million dollars to help offset the alleged damage the federal tax plan is doing to the middle class.  They also unload on Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Meehan, a married Republican lawmaker who used taxpayer dollars to settle a dispute with a female staffer he allegedly made romantic advances towards.  Meehan pathetically insists it was not a romantic overture, just that they were soulmates.

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House Judiciary Chairman: There Is No DACA Deadline

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The author of the House of Representatives bill to clamp down on illegal immigration and address the fate of people brought to the U.S. illegally as children says there is no reason for lawmakers to rush immigration legislation and says his goal is to make sure the nation never faces an illegal immigration crisis again.

Senate Democrats tried to attach immigration legislation to efforts to keep the government funded past January 19.  Three days later, they agreed to fund the government in exchange for a promise that an immigration debate would begin prior to the next funding deadline of Feb. 8.

At issue is the fate of roughly 700,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.  President Obama granted legal status for anyone who enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, through executive action in 2012.  In September, President Trump announced the executive DACA program would end in March 2018.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is author of the Securing America’s Future Act.  He says despite some lawmakers waving frantically at the calendar, Congress does not need to race to get legislation done.

“We should take our time and not feel we’re compelled to do anything by any deadline.  There is no deadline.  February 8 is not a deadline to solve this bill.  It is a deadline to keep the government funded but not to solve this problem.  March 5, the deadline the president has set, can be changed if necessary,” said Goodlatte, who also notes a federal judge has ordered a stay on Trump’s order.

“We should use all the time that’s necessary to get this done right and not a minute longer,” said Goodlatte.

The Goodlatte bill and the Senate’s Gang of Six legislation differ significantly in many ways.  It allows current DACA enrollees to receive legal status for three years, which they can renew in perpetuity.  The bill does not offer them a pathway to citizenship, and it grants no legal status to people eligible for DACA but failed to enroll.

The Senate plan offers a pathway to citizenship  to DACA recipients as well as the other so-called “Dreamers.”  It also confers legal status on the very parents who broke the law to bring their families to the U.S.

Goodlatte’s plan would also greatly limit chain migration to only spouses and minor children, kill the visa lottery, authorize whatever is necessary to beef up border security, and make overstaying one’s visa a crime.

Goodlatte says his legislation comes from a very straightforward premise.

“We agreed we would negotiate on four points: security, chain migration, ending the visa lottery, and DACA.  That’s what my bill does,” said Goodlatte.

He also explained his mindset in crafting the legislation.  He wants “a fair way way to deal with the problem created by President Obama in this unconstitutional program and ended by President Trump.”

“But then [Trump] turned around and said these individuals need a solution and Congress should do it.  We provided that in our bill,” said Goodlatte.

He also wants this to be the last time Congress has to deal with the immigration mess.

“We also are the only plan that addresses Speaker Ryan’s concern and that is that we not allow this problem to happen again,” said Goodlatte.

While the Senate and the media focus on the Gang of Six bill, Goodlatte says he has assurances from Republican House leaders that his legislation will come to the House floor.  He says before that time, he plans to educate his colleagues on why all of the various enforcement mechanisms are required and why he thinks they will be effective.

Goodlatte is ready to defend his bill, starting with his refusal to grant DACA enrollees a pathway to citizenship.

“We don’t object to people who are DACA recipients finding an opportunity to get a green card and U.S. citizenship as long as they follow the existing law like anybody else who has followed the rules and come here legally,” said Goodlatte.

“Under our bill, DACA recipients would be allowed to live in the United States  permanently with three-year renewables but indefinitely.  [They can] work in the United States, own a business in the United States, travel in and out of the country and if they find a way under the normal law to qualify for U.S. citizenship that’s fine, but not a special pathway to citizenship,” said Goodlatte.

He says the parents who perpetrated the crime of illegal immigration should not be rewarded in any way.

“I am not unsympathetic to the situation, but it is a situation that their parents created for them and one we have to respond to with that in mind.  In other words, take care of them but don’t give them an opportunity to petition for those same parents who were responsible for coming here illegally in the first place,” said Goodlatte.

In exchange for granting legal status for DACA recipients, Goodlatte’s bill clamps down hard on chain migration, ending the practice of an immigrant sponsoring many extended family members to come into the U.S.  It also ends the visa lottery.

“The visa lottery is a crazy program that gives 55,000 people green cards every year, not based on family relations, not based on job skills, but based upon pure luck.  That is totally unfair and it is a national security concern as well,” said Goodlatte.

When it comes to border security, President Trump has made it clear that there will be provision for a border wall or he will not agree to DACA legislation.  Goodlatte says Republicans are in agreement on what that means.

“There is a need to repair fences, to extend the wall and build a wall in some places, particularly in high population areas and in high crime areas where there is a lot of smuggling going on.  You do not need it where there are mountains, where there are large deserts, or where there are rivers,” said Goodlatte.

But he cautions enforcement advocates that there is a lot more to preventing the influx of illegal immigration than just the wall.

“That is one tool but it doesn’t at all address the 40 percent of [illegal immigrants] who come into this country legally and them simply ignore the laws and overstay their visas.  Nor does it address the people who come into the country illegally  and are not trying to evade the border patrol but are actually going to them and turning themselves in,” said Goodlatte.

He says those people are then released into the U.S. and told to show up for a court hearing, which they rarely do.

Goodlatte’s bill is officially known as H.R. 4760.

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‘This Wasn’t About Abortion, It Was About Infanticide’

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Live Action President Lila Rose says President Trump is off to a “promising” start on pro-life issues but she says the president and Congress must do what it takes to defund Planned Parenthood at a time when Democrats are voting in favor of “infanticide.”

Still in her twenties, Rose has been a leading pro-life activist for a decade, starting when she was 15.  She gained notoriety for videotaping her experiences posing as a pregnant teenager at various Planned Parenthood facilities.

One year into the Trump presidency and 45 years since the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, Rose gives the administration a decent grade on pro-life issues.

“I think the last year has been promising.  I would use that word, especially the folks that he’s surrounded himself with, and the appointments he’s made, and the confirming of Justice Gorsuch.  These are good signs,” said Rose.

“I think it’s good that he showed up to speak from the Rose Garden at the March for Life.  I think his appointments are good on [Health and Human Services].  The head of the Department of Justice is now investigating Planned Parenthood.  These are good things, but we really have to achieve the biggest thing, which is stopping the government forcing of taxpayers to fund abortion chains,” said Rose.

“We are urging to administration to really lean on Congress to make sure they get that bill to ensure that we’re not funding the biggest abortion chain (Planned Parenthood) $1.5 million every day,” added Rose.

Republicans did try to include defunding of Planned Parenthood in various forms of Obamacare repeal or reform legislation, only to be thwarted by the likes of Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Rose does worry that congressional leaders and members may be more eager to promise defunding Planned Parenthood than to actually do it.

“I am concerned about lip service and I think others in the movement are concerned.  This is a really hard thing to do.  You basically have to break 50 votes.  Depending on how the rules are changed or amended, you could get the vice president to weigh in and be the tiebreaker in the Senate.

“There is a path to do it.  It’s a matter of is this going to be the most important thing for the administration when it comes to upholding the first human right and protecting human life in this country,” said Rose.

While Rose and other pro-life activists pressure lawmakers to make defunding Planned Parenthood a priority, she is appalled by how Democrats approached Friday’s House vote on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

The legislation would require medical personnel to do whatever possible to save the life of a baby if he or she emerges alive from the mother’s womb following an attempted abortion.  It reinforces existing policy on this front but also adds criminal penalties, including up to five years in prison for failing to pursue life-saving measures.

The bill passed, with all Republicans voting for it, but 183 of 189 Democrats opposed it.

Planned Parenthood denounced the bill.

“Medical guidelines and ethics already compel physicians facing life-threatening circumstances to respond. Doctors and clinicians oppose this law because it prevents them from giving the best care to their patients. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists strongly opposes this legislation, calling it a “gross  interference in the practice of medicine,'” said a PLanned Parenthood statement.

Planned Parenthood official Dana Singiser took it even further.

“The political agenda here is clear: to take away access to safe, legal abortion,” said Singiser in the same statement.

But Rose says this vote just shows how radical Democrats are on abortion now.

“I think it just shows the insanity of the Democratic Party today, which is really going to hurt them in elections the more word gets out.  This bill, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, wasn’t even about abortion.  It was about infanticide.  It was about protecting children who have been born and who deserve to be protected,” said Rose.

“The fact that Democrats in a huge voting bloc, tried to reject a bill that would protect against infanticide is extremely troubling.  Look, most of the electorate – including in the Democratic Party – want at least some restrictions on abortion.  That’s the majority of Democrats, including Democrat women,” said Rose.

Rose says Democrats are increasingly marching to whatever tune Planned Parenthood is playing.

“They help elect these people so even though these folks try to mislead voters to say that they were more moderate or they cared about human rights or do what was best once in office, their elections are being funded by Planned Parenthood.

“They’re going to march to the beat of their drum, even if that beat ultimately includes shooting down protections against infanticide,” said Rose.

One of the major themes at Friday’s March for Life was how science is on the side of the pro-life movement, most especially with the advancements in ultrasound technology, but in other ways as well.  Rose says the arguments that life begins at birth or viability should determine personhood are relics from years past.

“If you create an arbitrary line at birth, then you are killing children who are viable before birth, children that are separated by inches of a birth canal from human rights protections.  It’s arbitrary.  It doesn’t make sense,” said Rose.

And she says science is winning the viability debate as well.

“Viability is being increasingly moved backwards.  Children can now survive outside the womb with medical assistance a little past 21 weeks.  That’s incredible.  The more we develop our medical technology, the more and more that viability line will change.  People are realizing it’s an arbitrary line and that life, as science reveals, begins at the moment of conception,” said Rose.

Rose says the pro-life movement has a lot of momentum right now both politically and to some extent in the courts.  However, she does contend Congress needs to seize that momentum and end taxpayer subsidies for Planned Parenthood for this Congress to be a true success.

She also claims cultural momentum, pointing out that more Americans are pro-life and young people a major reason why.  Rose also says the personal stories of mothers who carry difficult pregnancies to term and the testimonies of former abortion clinic workers are making a big difference in changing minds around the nation.

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Libs Fume at Schumer, Court Kills House District Map, Holt Does Kim’s Bidding

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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America enjoy seeing Democrats get accused of caving in the shutdown standoff and seeing the avalanche of leftist criticism aimed at Chuck Schumer.  They also shake their heads as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rules that the current congressional map is unconstitutional gerrymandering and a new map must be drawn, likely costing the Republicans at least two seats.  And they’re disgusted as North Korea keeps finding ways to turn the Winter Olympics in South Korea into an opportunity to glorify its own communist dictatorship, and media figures like NBC’s Lester Holt seem only too happy to help.

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Brat Discusses End of Shutdown, DACA Fight, FISA Memo

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Senate Democrats abandoned their hopes of attaching an immigration bill to legislation to fund the federal government , but Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., warns a fierce fight over immigration policy is still coming that conservatives must win.

Brat also expounded upon why he and dozens of other House Republicans want to make public a FISA memo on FBI and Justice Department conduct in recent years.

However, the big story on Capitol Hill Monday was Senate Democrats agreeing to a GOP plan to fund the federal government through February 8 in exchange for a promise to start a debate on legislation to grant legal status and possibly a path to citizenship for people brought to the United States illegally when they were children.

Until Monday, Democrats has insisted upon immigration being tied to the funding, but Brat says reality smacked the minority party in the face since the government partially shuttered operations at midnight Saturday morning.

“I think they heard plenty of feedback coming back that said, ‘What are you guys doing?'” said Brat, noting the position of Democrats was tantamount to withholding pay for our military and funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program all for the sake of helping people in the U.S. illegally.

Brat says the untenable position of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and other Democrats even overwhelmed efforts in the media to paint Republicans as responsible for the shutdown since they control the White House and both chamber in Congress.

“It’s amazing that you have to have a debate on who shut the government down.  You’ve got 95 percent in the House and the Senate on the Democrat side voting to shut it down.  If you forego rationality and language in the public square, that’s a hint where your society is,” lamented Brat.

In addition to wanting legislation to provide legal status for 800,000 people enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, Brat says Democrats wanted the provision with no conditions.

“They got out way over their skis.  They’re saying they want a DACA debate.  We’re going to have a DACA debate.  What they really mean is they want a clean, Democrat DACA bill and no border security,” said Brat.

It’s not just Democrats pushing for a generous DACA bill.  The so-called Gang of Six includes Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Cory Gardner, R-Colo.

The legislation they crafted with Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., not only grants permanent legal status to the roughly 800,000 DACA enrollees but to all people here illegally who are eligible for DACA but never signed up for it.  All of them would also be allowed to pursue a “pathway to citizenship.”

In addition, the parents of all of those people would also get legal status despite being responsible for the law-breaking to enter the U.S. in the first place.  All told, some 10 million people could gain legal status as a result of the Gang of Six bill.

The offsets in the legislation amount to very little.  The Gang of Six bill would tweak but not fundamentally change current chain migration and visa lottery policies and only allocate money to maintain existing border fencing.

Brat says that approach is reckless, and he is particularly frustrated about the lack of action on chain migration, which allows citizens to sponsor immediate and extended family members to come to the U.S. legally.

“You have all of the leading conspirators on the other side – Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi and Dick Durbin – all coming out against chain migration as early as five years ago.  They’ve totally switched sides,” said Brat.

Brat says the progression of legalizing DACA recipients and their extended families results in an economic nightmare.

“If you allow the DACA piece to go through that will have a lot of unintended consequences like chain migration and extended families.  That will lead to millions more, while we’re trying to get 20 million American citizens that have left the workforce back in the workforce,” said Brat.

“We’ve got to get all of our own citizens back in the labor force and then you see if you have a labor shortage.  The other key piece is we’re trying to move towards a rational skills and merit-based immigration system instead of the familial piece that has gotten us in this boat in the first place,” said Brat.

Brat also says following the Gang of Six prescription will result in another huge bill to pay for a nation already more than $20 trillion in debt.

“Who’s gonna pay the bill?  That’s where you get the issue: health care, if you’ve got two kids in public schools that’s $26,000 a year.  Every person in the country with a certain status is eligible for $40,000 of federal benefits a year.  That’s one of the reasons we’ve got a welfare crisis right now,” said Brat.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to begin a DACA debate before government funding runs out again on Feb. 8.  Given the easy passage of the Gang of Eight bill in the Senate in 2013, passage of the Gang of Six bill seems likely.

That would put immense pressure on the House and President Trump to go along, but Brat says 2013-2014 proves stopping a bad bill is not impossible.

Brat should know.  His upset primary win over the sitting House majority leader in June 2014 was a major factor in derailing the Gang of Eight plan.

“It did blow up in the House.  I think there was an election that had something to do with it in Virginia’s seventh district.  I’ve heard rumors,” cracked Brat.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., is sponsoring a far different immigration reform plan.  He would grant legal status to DACA recipents with no pathway to citizenship.  He would also limit chain migration to spouses and children and ditch the visa lottery altogether.  His bill would authorize border wall construction but fails to appropriate money for it.

Brat says commitment to Goodlatte’s approach and a President Trump veto as a backstop gives amnesty opponents plenty of firepower.

“We need to start off strong with the Goodlatte bill.  Then you could have a debate between the Goodlatte bill and the Senate.  Then the president is the ultimate veto threat, so a lot of it is going to depend on where President Trump comes down on this,” said Brat.

Brat is also one of several dozen House Republicans who have seen the FISA memo from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that GOP members describe as alarming “alarming” to “stunning” to sure to land people in prison.  While specifics are still under wraps, the four-page memo focuses on alleged FISA abuses by the FBI and Justice Department during the 2016 campaign.

The top Democrat on the intelligence panel, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says the memo should not be released because the American people will not be able to understand it without the supporting documentation.

Brat says the memo should be made public because the people have the right to make up their own minds about what’s in it and what the fallout should be.

“We’re a democratic republic.  The people are our boss.  We’re not the boss. Maybe he got his eighth grade civics upside down but I still believe in the good old school stuff where the people are my boss and I’m going to let them see the information, let them make up their mind, and then I’m going to represent them.  That’s my job,” said Brat.

Despite the strong adjectives used by other Republicans, Brat says he is not worried about the memo being over-hyped.

“There’s something just very, very wrong at the highest levels of our Justice Department,” said Brat.  “I’m not too worried about the over-hype on this.  You cannot over-hype any corruption at all in the highest levels of government.”

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