Free Republic

Immigration reform advocates plan an aggressive campaign to bring the issue back — and the White House has signaled it’s on board. Can Obama emerge from the fiscal crisis with enough momentum to win the immigration fight? As the fiscal fight roiling Washington nears its end, the White House is already signaling that it plans to use the political momentum it has gained during the shutdown fight to charge back into the immigration debate. And this time, Democratic pollsters and advocates say, they could actually win. The final chapter of the current crisis hasn’t been written yet, but Democrats in...

Over the past few years, immigration reform has been at the forefront of debates in Congress. In both the Senate and the House of Representatives, members from across the aisle have come together to develop bipartisan bills that would change the lives of over 11 million undocumented immigrants. Some in Congress have worked tirelessly to create a law that would provide a path to citizenship for millions, while others have focused the debate on border security. In an exclusive interview with Latinos Post, National Council of La Raza (NCLR)’s senior immigration legislation analyst Laura Vazquez discussed the future of immigration...

Once the fiscal crisis has been resolved, President Barack Obama is going to push for immigration reform, he told the Los Angeles affiliate of Spanish-language network Univision on Tuesday. Obama, who largely managed to hold on to office on the backs of Hispanic voters, has long looked to easing the plight of the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants, but other issues have kept coming in the way during his second term.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blasted House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday after leaks circulated of a plan that House Republicans might offer to end the spending and debt stalemate.“We felt blindsided by the news from the House,” Reid said on the Senate floor in a scathing attack on Boehner and his House GOP members. The Nevada Democrat said “extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo" the negotiations which he and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have been conducting in the past few days. Reid’s torrent of criticism came hours after he and McConnell both said...

ObamaCare is at the center of a rapidly escalating fight that threatens to shut the government down this fall. [WATCH VIDEO]Senate Republicans, including two members of the leadership, are coalescing around a proposal to block any government funding resolution that includes money for the implementation of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.But such a move is a nonstarter for President Obama and congressional Democrats. Republicans have tried this maneuver in Obama’s first term, only to back off later to the chagrin of Tea Party leaders.This time, GOP lawmakers are emboldened by problems plaguing the administration’s ObamaCare implementation. But that zeal...

In contemplating the bizarre, incompetent, and feckless behavior of House Speaker John Boehner over the years, I am reminded of the signature scene from the 1969 Western comedy Support Your Local Sheriff: In it,the sheriff (James Garner) ridicules dim-witted prisoner Joe Dandy (Bruce Dern), deriding him and maintaining full control even though his jail has no bars. The money scene is from 2:40 through 3:30: The cell on the right is yours. We don't have any bars yet...but we're gonna operate just as if the bars are there...so while you're in this jail, you stay on that side of the...

...........During an appearance on ABC’s Sunday program “This Week,” Boehner was asked what will happen if Obama maintains his position not to negotiate over raising the debt limit. “If he [Obama] continues to refuse to negotiate, the country is going to default?” a stunned George Stephanopoulos asked Boehner. “That’s the path we are on,” he replied. “I’m willing to sit down with the president, but his refusal to negotiate is putting our country at risk,” he added, reiterating it multiple times throughout the interview.......

Report: Boehner told group of House Republicans he’ll violate the Hastert Rule to raise the debt ceiling if necessaryBig news — unless, of course, it’s disinformation, which I doubt. With attention shifting to potential consequences of not increasing the debt limit, one House Republican said Thursday that Speaker John A. Boehner had told colleagues in a meeting that he was determined to prevent a federal default and was willing to pass a measure through a combination of Republican and Democratic votes. The lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Boehner had said he would be willing to...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid ripped House Speaker John Boehner as a “coward” in private on Thursday — and immediately ­afterwards described him as a “nice guy” in public. “He’s a coward,” Reid said of Boehner, referring to his GOP rival’s efforts to preserve subsidies for lawmakers’ health-care coverage, while later backing a House bill to end them. Reid made the comment at a closed-door meeting of Democratic senators Thursday, Politico reported. Minutes later, he went before TV cameras with a different assessment. “I feel positive that John Boehner — who’s basically a nice guy — cannot let this go...

Sen. Clarie McCaskill (D-Mo.) accused Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) of not listening to voters in general but only the “loud” ones. She told MSNBC that “the moderates need to muscle up here.” “You know, everybody on — in this far extreme, unreasonable, irrational right, is afraid of somebody running against them from the right. And they need to be afraid of a moderate Republican running against them,” said McCaskill, who defeated challenger Todd Akin in the last election cycle. “And people — and Boehner really needs to show courage here. I know that he’s calling this Cruz’s shutdown. Boehner knows...

According to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev, it's apparently Ted Cruz's fault that he gave CNN's Dana Bash the answer he did regarding children with cancer, going by audio posted Wednesday at Real Clear Politics. Politico's Dylan Byers, in the meantime, was busy covering for the Senate Majority Leader by trying to make people believe that Reid didn't say what he said, Newsbusters' Tom Blumer reported. Bash asked why Reid did not support a GOP measure that would help children with cancer. "But if you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn’t you do it?" she asked, according to...

As the partial government shutdown enters its third day, many House Republicans are determined to keep fighting, even though they see no plausible way out of the current impasse, because they've come so far they cannot imagine backing down now. "I think there's a sense that for us to do a clean CR now -- then what the hell was this about?" one Republican House member told me. "So I don't think it's going to end anytime soon."Wednesday was the best day in a while for Republicans, but not because of any progress they made toward their goal of defunding,...

Note to congressional Democrats: You can change your mind on Obamacare. It's allowed. Really. You can. We won't tell. If MSNBC's anti-gun lefties like Ed Schultz can do a 180 on a hot-button issue like guns, then Democrats can change their minds about President Obama's signature Obamacare. More on this later. President Barack Obama promised to provide healthcare insurance to some 30 million Americans without it. He promised to do so more cheaply than under the current system, without lowering quality for anyone. He promised: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If...

In a Tuesday interview, Rep. Alan Grayson charged that Republican House members have been literally intoxicated while casting votes on the continuing resolutions that set the stage for today’s government shutdown. Noting “a number of public reports that you can smell alcohol on their breath as they’re voting gleefully to shut down the government and create chaos,” Grayson said that he had personally witnessed GOP colleagues smelling like alcohol. “Many of them seem loaded,” said Grayson. The Florida congressman declined to name names, saying, “it’s the usual suspects,” but that he didn’t “really feel like getting that personal with people.”...

In a move that makes a government shutdown very likely, House Republicans approved a spending plan early Sunday morning that would delay Obamacare for a year and repeal its tax on medical devices. The temporary budget resolution now goes back to the Senate, where Democrats have consistently said any changes to President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law is a deal-killer. ... The decision to vote on the House amendments overnight emerged from a rare weekend GOP caucus meeting called by House Speaker John Boehner. The votes, taken after midnight, were 231-192 for the Obamacare delay, and 248-174 for the medical...

President Obama made news with two phone calls this week. On one of the calls he pledged fervent cooperation--even though he foresees difficult negotiations ahead. On the other, Obama warned the person on the other end the line that he could expect nothing but the back of his hand. On the first call, he admitted that "while there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward... [he] believe[d] the two parties could reach a comprehensive solution." (Comprehensive, mind you. Not partial, not segmented, but over-arching, all encompassing, and addressing the most important items to both sides. Hence, comprehensive.) On...

Turn the clock back a year. It’s the middle of the 2012 election and I tell you that President Obama will win a second term commandingly, Republicans will hold the House and Democrats will keep the Senate. On December 31, the Bush tax cuts expire and sequestration takes effect. Soon after that, we’ll hit the debt ceiling. President Obama also campaigned on raising taxes for those with incomes over $250,000, refuses to negotiate on the debt ceiling and everyone hates sequestration. Oh, and the Republican party will swing even further to the right in the aftermath of the election...

Washington’s Gov. Jay Inslee has warned Congress, in a blunt letter, to recognize the “real world” and not to impose any more “needless, self-inflicted” wounds on the American economy. The governor’s letter came on a morning when the Republican-run U.S. House of Representatives voted — almost entirely on party lines — to fund the federal government until Dec. 15, but only if implementation of the Affordable Care Act (aka. “Obamacare”) is halted. “You should not allow the peoples’ health care to be held hostage,” Inslee wrote to Congress’ leaders. “It is troubling that some in Congress would stop government from...

In what is seen as a major turn around, House Speaker, John Boehner has announced that the House will move to defund Obamacare, while providing funding for the rest of the government, at least on a temporary basis. This will put pressure on Harry Reid and the senate democrats, who have been trying to convince voters that the republicans are trying to shut down the government. This effectively ends the compromise Boehner had made with the democrats to try to sell his fellow republicans on the idea of funding the unpopular program. The bill that's expected to be offered today,...

Republican lawmakers are growing increasingly frustrated with what they say is a lack of communication from their leaders. Both centrist and conservative members in the House believe that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenants could have done more earlier this year to counter the Tea Party's effort to defund ObamaCare. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill say such an effort is politically impossible with a Democratic-controlled Senate and a Democrat in the White House. Regardless, the rift on what to do on ObamaCare has opened up a civil war within the GOP. That deep division is flaring at a time...

On Tuesday, after John Boehner’s last gambit to pass a government-funding bill ran aground in the face of a Tea Party revolt, a reporter asked the House speaker if he had any idea what he’d do next. “No. Do you have an idea?” Boehner replied, according to Politico. “They’ll just shoot it down anyway.” Boehner’s dilemma -- finding a way to satisfy the right wing of his caucus that doesn’t involve shutting down the government -- isn’t new. The debate rages in Washington over whether he has an impossible job or whether he’s just terrible at it, but it doesn't...

The Federal Election Commission is examining whether dozens of political action committees and individuals contributed more than the legally allowed amount to House Speaker John Boehner during last year's election cycle. Letters the Federal Election Committee sent Monday to Friends of John Boehner indicated that donors including coal, energy, and gambling interests, exceeded contribution limits to Boehner's committee by more than $150,000.

Via the Free Beacon and the Corner. No surprise that two of O’s few Syria allies in Congress would be outraged on his behalf by Putin’s latest humiliation, but honestly, I’ve been against striking Syria all along and I was irritated by the op-ed too. Makes me wonder how many doves on the Hill are starting to chafe at the obvious enjoyment the Kremlin and its client are taking in embarrassing the White House, notwithstanding the fact that our president spent a full year moronically bumbling his way into this mess. You may hate having Ryan Leaf at quarterback, but...

The only real chance of blocking Obamacare is for Congress to pass a continuing resolution that deprives it of money, even though a government shutdown would be the likely result. But that appears to be a step too far for some Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Listen, our goal here is not to shut down the government,” Boehner told reporters on Tuesday. “Our goal is to cut spending and to stop Obamacare. And I believe that the strategy that was outlined to members this morning accomplishes that.” Press reports say the Republican strategy calls for the House to...

House Republican leaders have chickened out and decided to fund a program that will destroy our country. According to media reports, GOP leaders will attempt to pass a “trick rule” that allows them to pretend to defund Obamacare without actually doing so. Under the trick rule, the House will pass a continuing resolution that fully funds Obamacare along with separate phony bill that defunds Obamacare. Democrats in the Senate will then throw the defunding bill in the garbage and send the real bill that funds Obamacare to the president’s desk. It’s the “now you see defunding, now you don’t” strategy.

House Republican leaders said Tuesday they will try to force the Democratic-led Senate to vote on defunding President Barack Obama's health-care law before the House will agree to enact a stopgap government-funding measure. "Our goal here is not to shut down the government," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters in Washington. "Our goal is to cut spending and to stop Obamacare." -SNIP- everal Republicans expressed opposition because they said they see the strategy as non-binding. "Every member of the conference said they're going to do everything they can to defund Obamacare, and our leadership said in there they know this...

Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee overseeing immigration, said he expected Congress to pursue reform legislation despite a tight schedule featuring debates over Syria, health care, and the debt limit. Those and other issues “should not deter us from getting to [immigration] as soon as possible,” Goodlatte said in an appearance on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show on Tuesday. Goodlatte said he expected votes soon, perhaps in October, on a series of smaller House bills on border security, internal enforcement, guest workers, and high-tech visas. “Those bills are ready to go to the floor of the House...

House Republicans are dusting off an old legislative gambit from April 2011 as one way to move ahead this week with a stopgap spending bill for the first months of the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. The goal is to give conservatives a vote on defunding health care reform without resulting in a government shutdown. It’s worked before, but “before” is the operative word. And until Tuesday’s Republican Conference, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) won’t really know if this flash-from-the-past can flash again. Most simply the procedure calls for sending the Senate a stopgap spending bill together with a resolution...

Text of the Continuing Resolution (CR) that will fund the government for 60-75 days will be released on Tuesday, the conservative source said, before a House vote on Thursday. The move comes abruptly as conservatives are ramping up their final push on House leadership with a big Tea Party rally outside the Capitol on Tuesday calling for Obamacare’s defunding.House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel told Breitbart News the “CR will include defunding ObamaCare,” but would not specify whether or not a certain procedural “trick” the GOP leadership used in a similar situation in 2011 will be employed yet again.Breitbart...

Do you remember how tough Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) talked when he was in the minority? Well, ever since kicking off his tenure as majority leader after the 2010 elections with a series of good cries, he has caved on every single issue brought before him. In the case of Syria, Boehner has decided to throw his support behind the Muslim Brotherhood / Al-Qaeda rebels. The true irony of all this is that the Congress will be working toward giving the President the authority to fight on behalf of Al-Qaeda on the anniversary of 9/11/01 and 9/11/12.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has turned down a Russian request to meet with him to discuss Syria, his office tells CNN, making it unclear if any U.S. lawmakers will sit down with a planned delegation from Moscow. This comes less than a day after House Speaker John Boehner similarly turned down a request from the Russian government to meet.

Rep. Eric Cantor released a statement today supporting the use of military force in Syria and believes it is in our best interest to respond to the use of WMD. From majorityleader.gov: “I intend to vote to provide the President of the United States the option to use military force in Syria. While the authorizing language will likely change, the underlying reality will not. America has a compelling national security interest to prevent and respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction, especially by a terrorist state such as Syria, and to prevent further instability in a region of...

Senior GOP aides of a super PAC linked to Speaker John Boehner are lobbying House Republicans to pass the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill, legislation that Boehner has said he will not bring to the House floor. The lobbying effort is coming under the umbrella of the American Action Network, a nonprofit 501(c)(4) “action tank” led by former senator Norm Coleman, which is touting the “major positive economic impact” of the Senate bill in e-mails sent to individual House Republican offices. AAN is housed in the same office as the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC associated with Boehner,...

RACINE — On Thursday it was a panel discussion and before that it was a post-town hall rally. There were press conferences, forums in English and Spanish and demonstrations. On Saturday, the push for immigration reform manifested in a hot parking lot behind Lopez Bakery, 1667 Douglas Ave., where a handful of young activists gathered to spray-paint a poster. “Rep. Paul Ryan,” they wrote, “we want a vote on comprehensive immigration reform.” The city has become a hot spot for pro-immigration reform demonstrations, panels and more because Racine County is represented by Ryan, R-Wis., one of few congressional Republicans to...

The stakes of the Syria vote couldn’t be higher for President Barack Obama: If Congress doesn’t back him up, his already troubled second term would be dealt another blow in the twin arenas of domestic and foreign politics. (snip) Some of Boehner’s colleagues in both parties read his moves as an indication that he would not stand in the president’s way in launching strikes. But Obama had grown frustrated with both international and domestic leaders who gave him tacit approval but declined to jump to his aid. He was taking all the risk and responsibility for a Syria strike, and...

We have just witnessed one of the most stunning and humiliating climb downs of any president in the history of the United States. Obama's humiliation is entirely of his own making. He unilaterally threatened to wage war, however limited he said it would be, for no clear purpose, with no clear strategy and with no clear outcome. He did so thoughtlessly by proclaiming a "red line" and thus backing himself through inadvertence and, more important, his country into an untenable position. He pushed the country out onto a limb only to find he was alone, without allies, without Congress, even...

<p>Good afternoon, everybody. Ten days ago, the world watched in horror as men, women and children were massacred in Syria in the worst chemical weapons attack of the 21st century. Yesterday the United States presented a powerful case that the Syrian government was responsible for this attack on its own people.</p>

WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) today issued the following joint statement. “Under the Constitution, the responsibility to declare war lies with Congress. We are glad the president is seeking authorization for any military action in Syria in response to serious, substantive questions being raised. In consultation with the president, we expect the House to consider a measure the week of September 9th. This provides the president time to make his case to Congress and the American people.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said on Laura Ingraham’s radio program that House Speaker John Boehner’s speakership is in jeopardy if any form of amnesty, such as the Senate's immigration reform bill, becomes law. “I’m worried about conference,” Paul said Friday, according to Roll Call. “The only way to avoid a problem with conference is for the speaker of the House to say we are not going to conference, and we will not allow a vote on anything coming out of conference that resembles the Senate bill, and if there were a much more limited bill that emphasizes border security first,...

Speaker John A. Boehner said Monday that President Barack Obama is in for a “whale of a fight” over the debt limit, with the GOP leader insisting on spending cuts greater than, not just equal to, the amount the debt ceiling is raised.The Ohio Republican, speaking at a fundraising event for Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, said he has “made it clear that we’re not going to increase the debt limit without cuts and reforms that are greater than the increase in the debt limit,” according to the Idaho Statesman.“The president doesn’t think this is fair, thinks I’m being difficult to...

Louisville, KY - Republican U.S. Senate candidate Matt Bevin called on House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to take the lead in defunding Obamacare instead of caving to President Obama. Bevin’s latest call comes on the heels of Speaker Boehner’s decision to pass a short-term government funding bill at the end of September in order to avoid the fight over defunding Obamacare altogether. For weeks, Matt Bevin has joined true conservatives like Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee in calling on Mitch McConnell to lead the fight to defund Obamacare. Instead, Sen. McConnell has actively...

A Tea Party groups rallied yesterday outside of Boehner’s Ohio office demanding him to defund Obamacare or he will be known as the one who ushered in Obamacare and thus Obamacare will also be known as Boehnercare, just as Mark Levin coined it. A leader of the Tea Party group responsible spoke to Greta last night and did a great job articulating her message:

The United States House Speaker John Boehner is an influential politician who frequently confronts President Barack Obama over issues such as the fiscal cliff and Medicare reform. But last week, the powerful Republican found himself in an awkward position when an 80-page training manual for interns was leaked to the public after an intern got drunk at a party and misplaced the document. The manual’s “Rules for Intern Success” contain some inconceivable guidelines, such as: “Always say yes” and “Don’t talk to the press,” while “A lot of our phone callers react to what is on Fox, so stay updated...

Speaker John A. Boehner sent a letter to President Barack Obama Wednesday seeking a “clear, unambiguous explanation” of how a strike on Syria fits into U.S. objectives and questioning the president’s legal authority to do so absent Congressional authorization. The Ohio Republican makes clear he believes the consultation with Congress so far has been insufficient, and it comes as numerous House members have signed on to a letter to Obama demanding Congressional authorization before strikes. “It is essential you address on what basis any use of force would be legally justified and how the justification comports with the exclusive authority...

Tea party activists are planning to rally outside of House Speaker John A. Boehner’s Ohio office on Tuesday, telling the Republican speaker that if he doesn’t use this year’s spending fight to defund the health care law, it will hence be known to them as “BoehnerCare.” “If he funds it, he will own it,” said Janet Porter, president of Faith2Action, one of the groups participating in the rally.

Gregory Hodge, of Jefferson, is urging people on the political left and right to look critically at their party affiliation. Hodge was the state committeeman for the Lincoln County Republicans until he and 11 other Republicans unenrolled from the Maine Republican Party and resigned related positions this week, Hodge joined five other state committee members, Republican National Committee member Mark Willis, and five other registered Maine Republicans in writing a letter outlining their disaffiliation and the reasons behind it to Maine GOP Secretary Chuck Malaheris. The Aug. 18 letter criticizes a number of people, actions, and groups, including rule changes...

Attorney Bryan Smith earned the Club for Growth’s first major endorsement of the 2014 cycle, but he said he made the decision to challenge one of Speaker John A. Boehner’s top allies in Congress independently of the cash-flush, conservative group. ....... Smith is challenging eight-term Republican Rep. Mike Simpson for Idaho’s 2nd District. He got the Club for Growth’s attention after the group launched a campaign against several Republican incumbents, including Simpson, called “Primary My Congressman.” ....... So if Smith makes it to Congress, would he back Boehner in a leadership race? “We’re talking about an event that would take...

A Facebook posting from ForAmerica on Friday morning has generated at least 5,000 phone calls from conservative activists to House Speaker John Boehner’s office, Breitbart News has learned.“Everyone knows ObamaCare has to go. But Speaker John Boehner won't fight to defund it,” the conservative group ForAmerica wrote on its Facebook page on Friday shortly before noon ET. “Call the Speaker (877) 976-7521 and tell him to fight to defund ObamaCare now!”Scott Hogenson, the campaign manager for ForAmerica’s grassroots operation, confirmed to Breitbart News that at least 5,000 people called Boehner’s office over the course of the next few hours. The...