Warlord
06-28-2013, 03:17 PM
Huelskamp is on one of the Sunday shows this weekend. Here's an interview he gave with NewsMax:
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Rep. Tim Huelskamp tells Newsmax that President Barack Obama is more interested in making immigration reform a political issue than actually enacting the immigration bill passed by the Senate.
The Kansas Republican also says he expects Americans to support his proposed amendment to restore the Defense of Marriage Act when they "wake up" and see the repercussions of the Supreme Court's decision to strike it down.
Huelskamp, first elected in 2010 and a member of the Tea Party Caucus, is one of four Republicans the GOP leadership removed from key committee posts for failure to toe the party line, a move the congressman called "petty."
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Huelskamp was asked if the immigration bill passed by the Senate on Thursday is dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House.
"I sure hope so," he says. "I had a meeting with Sen. [Mike] Lee and Sen. [Rand] Paul yesterday morning with some other House members trying to figure out how we stop this in the House.
"As it stands now our leadership will not be running this bill. They've made a verbal commitment that nothing will come to the House floor on immigration unless it has a strong majority vote in the Republican conference."
Right now there is no majority support for the Senate bill in the House, Huelskamp discloses.
"If you would think how would one design a bill that would guarantee no passage in the House, this would be the bill.
"I am still convinced that [Obama] does not want a solution. He doesn't want to solve this problem. He wants an election-year issue for 2014. So he got the Senate to act, and he got a bunch of Republicans to join on board to call it bipartisan" so Obama could criticize the House "over the failure to give amnesty to millions of potential Democratic voters," he adds.
Asked how Huelskamp and other Republicans can hold Speaker John Boehner to his vow not to bring up the Senate immigration bill for a vote without a majority of Republicans in support, Huelskamp responds: "In the House there's a procedure called 'adopting a rule' that has to be adopted by a majority of the body before you can continue on to debate a bill.
"I am committed that if the bill comes up that is anything close to this Senate bill, I will vote against the rule so it doesn't come up for a debate.
"It all comes down to those votes and whether or not folks keep their word over here in the House leadership.
"I would guess the speaker would be very worried for his job if he suddenly said, 'You know what? We're just going to do what Nancy Pelosi wants to do on immigration,' and that would be a disaster.
"I still think it was a very bad decision by many of our senators to go down this path and provide this opportunity for the president to continue to decide what issues are going to be debated in Congress, rather than be aggressive and proactive. Right now we're reacting to a president with his poll numbers falling and scandals everywhere and they give him a huge victory in the Senate with Republican help."
Huelskamp believes that GOP support for an immigration bill that includes amnesty won't win over millions of new voters.
"Consultant after consultant, pollster after pollster in Washington, D.C., have been telling us for months since the election, and years before that, if we would just create amnesty, somehow, magically, folks would start voting for the Republican Party that haven't in the past. That didn't work for John McCain, it didn't work for Mitt Romney, and these are the same folks that ran these campaigns making that suggestion.
...
Huelskamp also says that since his removal from key committees by the GOP leadership, along with three other staunch conservatives, "there's been a real backlash and leadership had to come to the table and make promises, such as we won't bring an immigration bill like the president and Pelosi and Reid want us to do.
"Same thing when there was a farm bill that failed last week because their leadership was not willing to listen to conservatives. [Republican Rep.] Eric Cantor wanted to expand Obamacare a month ago and thought that was some great strategy. Conservatives again killed that. So we're slowly getting the message across.
"People are starting to pick up the phone and say, 'Wait a minute, we elected Republicans and we elected what we thought were conservatives. How come you're not doing that?'"
http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/obama-immigration-reform-bill/2013/06/28/id/512528?promo_code=EACE-1&utm_source=GatewayPundit&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1
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Rep. Tim Huelskamp tells Newsmax that President Barack Obama is more interested in making immigration reform a political issue than actually enacting the immigration bill passed by the Senate.
The Kansas Republican also says he expects Americans to support his proposed amendment to restore the Defense of Marriage Act when they "wake up" and see the repercussions of the Supreme Court's decision to strike it down.
Huelskamp, first elected in 2010 and a member of the Tea Party Caucus, is one of four Republicans the GOP leadership removed from key committee posts for failure to toe the party line, a move the congressman called "petty."
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV, Huelskamp was asked if the immigration bill passed by the Senate on Thursday is dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled House.
"I sure hope so," he says. "I had a meeting with Sen. [Mike] Lee and Sen. [Rand] Paul yesterday morning with some other House members trying to figure out how we stop this in the House.
"As it stands now our leadership will not be running this bill. They've made a verbal commitment that nothing will come to the House floor on immigration unless it has a strong majority vote in the Republican conference."
Right now there is no majority support for the Senate bill in the House, Huelskamp discloses.
"If you would think how would one design a bill that would guarantee no passage in the House, this would be the bill.
"I am still convinced that [Obama] does not want a solution. He doesn't want to solve this problem. He wants an election-year issue for 2014. So he got the Senate to act, and he got a bunch of Republicans to join on board to call it bipartisan" so Obama could criticize the House "over the failure to give amnesty to millions of potential Democratic voters," he adds.
Asked how Huelskamp and other Republicans can hold Speaker John Boehner to his vow not to bring up the Senate immigration bill for a vote without a majority of Republicans in support, Huelskamp responds: "In the House there's a procedure called 'adopting a rule' that has to be adopted by a majority of the body before you can continue on to debate a bill.
"I am committed that if the bill comes up that is anything close to this Senate bill, I will vote against the rule so it doesn't come up for a debate.
"It all comes down to those votes and whether or not folks keep their word over here in the House leadership.
"I would guess the speaker would be very worried for his job if he suddenly said, 'You know what? We're just going to do what Nancy Pelosi wants to do on immigration,' and that would be a disaster.
"I still think it was a very bad decision by many of our senators to go down this path and provide this opportunity for the president to continue to decide what issues are going to be debated in Congress, rather than be aggressive and proactive. Right now we're reacting to a president with his poll numbers falling and scandals everywhere and they give him a huge victory in the Senate with Republican help."
Huelskamp believes that GOP support for an immigration bill that includes amnesty won't win over millions of new voters.
"Consultant after consultant, pollster after pollster in Washington, D.C., have been telling us for months since the election, and years before that, if we would just create amnesty, somehow, magically, folks would start voting for the Republican Party that haven't in the past. That didn't work for John McCain, it didn't work for Mitt Romney, and these are the same folks that ran these campaigns making that suggestion.
...
Huelskamp also says that since his removal from key committees by the GOP leadership, along with three other staunch conservatives, "there's been a real backlash and leadership had to come to the table and make promises, such as we won't bring an immigration bill like the president and Pelosi and Reid want us to do.
"Same thing when there was a farm bill that failed last week because their leadership was not willing to listen to conservatives. [Republican Rep.] Eric Cantor wanted to expand Obamacare a month ago and thought that was some great strategy. Conservatives again killed that. So we're slowly getting the message across.
"People are starting to pick up the phone and say, 'Wait a minute, we elected Republicans and we elected what we thought were conservatives. How come you're not doing that?'"
http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/obama-immigration-reform-bill/2013/06/28/id/512528?promo_code=EACE-1&utm_source=GatewayPundit&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1