Norquist's ATR Wrongly Claims Jeff Sessions Blocking Immigration Amendments

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Grover Norquist’s organization, inaccurately claimed that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) was blocking amendments to the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill on Wednesday.

“Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) confirmed to Politico on Wednesday that he’s putting the brakes on the immigration bill,” ATR’s Government Affairs Manager Joshua Culling wrote in an op-ed published by The Daily Caller. “The Alabama senator is preventing lawmakers from considering amendments that would improve the legislation, most notably an amendment offered by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that would strengthen the bill’s border security measures and bring conservative support to the overall package.”

Culling linked to a Politico article that does not support his assertions about Sessions; rather, the piece details how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) were quarreling over the amendment process for the immigration bill. The only mention the Politico article makes of Sessions is a quote he gave warning against further complicating the more than thousand-page bill.

“We’ve got to be careful,” Sessions said. “These amendments represent important changes to an important piece of legislation and we can’t just throw up a bunch of amendments here at the beginning. People haven’t had time to digest them.”

As Breitbart News has detailed, Reid is the one who is blocking real amendments to fix what many perceive as fundamental flaws in the legislation. He officially killed Grassley’s amendment that would require border security before amnesty on Thursday morning with help from the Gang of Eight Republicans.

Via Twitter, the GOP staff of the Senate Budget Committee–of which Sessions is the ranking member–asked Culling if he would retract the inaccurate article. “Disappointed to see you’ve returned to launching personal smears against Sen. Sessions,” Senate Budget Committee GOP staff also wrote via Twitter to Culling.

Thus far, Culling and Grover Norquist’s ATR have kept the inaccurate piece published.