With just 33 working days remaining until Congress goes into recess on July 4th, one Democrat in the House of Representatives attempted a new method of getting Congressional members to vote on the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.
Representative Tony Cardenas used the House Budget mark-up session for Representative Paul Ryan’s House Republican budget plan for next year to introduce a comprehensive immigration reform bill as amendment. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan led the move to kill the amendment by way of a 21 to 15 party vote.
Together with other Democrats in the House of Representatives, Cardenas says that their immigration reform bill would cut the deficit by more than $900 billion and result in the creation of another 120,000 jobs per annum. “This budget cripples our commitment to seniors, to middle class families, to kids in our schools and to the job creators who we depend on to build this nation,” his press release stated. “It also ignores the massive effect that comprehensive immigration reform could have on our economy.”
Ryan derided the bill in a nine minute rebuttal of the amendment, claiming that such reform needs to be done step by step while falling back on the party line that laws are not being enforced and more border control is needed. His comments that it is not the job of the Budget Committee to rewrite laws were mocked by Cardenas, Ryan being visibly irritated when the former noted that this is exactly what he has been doing with Medicare rewrites.
