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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: GOP Plots Blue-Slip Attack On Immigration Bill May 30, 2007 House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber. The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House. The Senate immigration measure requires that illegal immigrants pay back taxes before becoming citizens, opening the door to a House protest, dubbed a “blue slip” for the color of its paper. House Republicans used the same back-taxes mandate for a blue-slip threat that derailed last year’s immigration conference. The new Senate bill still must survive two more weeks of voter scrutiny and contentious amendments, but several conservatives already are lying in wait for the Senate to “make the same mistake twice,” as one House GOP aide put it. “If we get an opportunity to do it, believe me, we’ll do it,” the aide said. “I think it’s going to be a matter of who will get there first. A number of people in the House are dying to be fingered as the person who killed [the Senate bill].” As the bill’s Senate supporters spend the recess fighting a wildfire of grassroots resistance to the immigration deal, which held together after an intense first week, some House Republicans are unconvinced by outreach from their Senate brethren. They acknowledge that a blue slip may be their only recourse to stop a process they believe Democrats will dominate in conference. Any House member can move to blue-slip a Senate-originated bill that raises revenue, though the protest requires a majority vote to send the legislation back across the Capitol and force immigration negotiators back to square one. “We would certainly have the right [to a blue slip] and could exercise it,” another House GOP aide said. “We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), said. The House Immigration Reform Caucus that Bilbray chairs, bitterly opposed to the Senate bill, “will use any and every means necessary to see that the American people get the immigration [reform] they deserve,” Bardella added. The list of House GOP critics who could race to blue-slip the Senate bill is a long one. Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), both staking presidential bids on opposition to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) all said through press secretaries that they are considering any and all options to counter the Senate bill. “I hope that the House will always defend its constitutional rights, and I would defer to House leadership to decide when that occurs,” Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said through a spokeswoman. The back-taxes provision that could trigger the blue slip came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to take heavy fire on the presidential hustings for supporting the immigration deal. McCain introduced a back-taxes amendment after a conference call in which Republican bloggers mentioned reports that the Bush administration had asked that this year’s bill not force the very costly process of tax collection among illegal immigrants. “I’d not heard that proposal on the part of the president,” McCain said, according to a transcript of the call. “I would resist that.” One Senate aide whose boss is supporting this year’s immigration push said reform supporters are well aware of the fierce House opposition to their bill. “There are certain elements, probably on both sides of the aisle, in the House that are going to use any procedural or technical process to slow it down or kill it,” the Senate aide said. “That way of getting out of answering this issue, it’s sort of petty. It’s small ball. Right now, with this issue, we’re going major league.” If the Senate bill falls victim to a blue slip, the aide added, it would be only after poison-pill amendments irrevocably weaken the measure’s delicate balance between border security, new merit-based visas, a temporary-worker program and safe harbor for the 12 million individuals in the country illegally. Senate supporters have reason to cheer after the immigration bill weathered a week of close calls and interest-group anger to head into recess essentially intact. President Bush joined the fray with a speech yesterday urging lawmakers to send him a bill this year. Yet some Senate Republicans may privately cheer on House members if a blue-slip threat becomes reality. “Conservatives don’t care how the bill goes down. They just want it to go away,” an aide to a Senate Republican said. Retorting to Senate negotiators’ claim that criticism from both liberals and conservatives means their bill has bridged the political gap, the aide quipped: “It just might be that everyone hates it because it’s really bad.” A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an avid supporter of the Senate deal and a cosponsor of his own House immigration bill, said the lawmaker is waiting to see how the Senate bill plays out before he gets nervous about whether one of his colleagues tries to kill the measure. Meanwhile, Flake praised Bush for weighing in during recess, saying, “Those in Congress who may disagree with the president on this issue certainly can’t disregard his credibility on it. President Bush has been consistent on the need for comprehensive immigration reform, and he’s been consistently right.” During a private gathering at the Capitol Hill Club last week, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to the bill as “a piece of s---,” according to reports. When asked by reporters last week to expand on his comment, Boehner reiterated that the comments were made in private but conceded that he was not pleased with the legislation in its current form. “I have serious concerns with the bill,” he said.
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Boe hner: Immigration Bill Is "Piece Of Shit".
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