Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview Thursday that conservatives are waiting to see how Paul Ryan will stop the illegal alien discharge petition.
Twenty-two establishment Republicans have signed a discharge petition to force a House Floor vote on an illegal alien amnesty bill. If 25 Republicans and 193 Democrats sign the petition, the bipartisan coalition can force a House vote on amnesty legislation.
Rep. Brat called this move “cynical.”
“We have about 25 Republicans for this discharge petition. Many of them are retiring members, and the timing is pretty cynical when you bypass the primary season,” Brat told Breitbart News. “These folks are leapfrogging leadership; they’re going over Paul Ryan, McCarthy, Scalise, etc.”
Breitbart News reported that Speaker Paul has several options to stop amnesty Republicans from pushing the amnesty discharge petition. These options include demoting Republicans from committee assignments, withdrawing campaign funds, putting the Trump-endorsed Goodlatte immigration bill on the House Floor, and keeping the House out of session just two days each month.
Congressman Brat told Breitbart News he wants to see what House Republican leadership will do to fight the amnesty discharge petition.
“We’re waiting to see how against it they are and what actions they will take,” Brat said. “One of the things they can do is bring the Goodlatte bill to the Floor, and that by itself gets rid of the discharge petition. The group of 25 are saying that they will vote against the rule to bring the Goodlatte bill to the Floor up for a vote. They don’t even want to have a vote on the Goodlatte bill, which probably has 180 or 190 right now. We get whipped on every other bill. We get calls from the secretary of agriculture for the farm bill but don’t get any calls from any secretaries or anything on this immigration bill. The immigration bill has not been whipped with any intensity at all.”
A spokesman for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise told Breitbart News that Scalise will continue to oppose the amnesty discharge petition. Scalise spokesman Chris Bond said:
Whip Scalise has been very clear with members that a discharge petition is the wrong way to legislate. He is still actively promoting the Goodlatte-McCaul [immigration reform] bill, and is talking directly with members who haven’t signed onto the petition to urge them not to. The Goodlatte-McCaul bill provides vital border security, ends the visa lottery, and addresses DACA, and the Whip feels strongly that this is the right approach.
Brat then suggested that support for pro-American immigration reform skyrockets “when you tell them about chain migration, people working here illegally, E-Verify, and securing the border.”
“It’s more a matter of leadership. You can’t have 25 Republicans offering a Democratic bill that the whole country doesn’t want — much less, Republicans going into the elections here,” Rep. Brat said.
The Virginia conservative then stated that the full amnesty bill could provide citizenship for up to ten million illegal aliens when combined with chain migration. Brat also noted that increased immigration depresses American wage rates to the benefit of big business interests.
Brat explained, “The full Dreamer bill is amnesty for roughly 3.7 million, giving them a pathway to citizenship over a decade and up to ten million when you do chain migration. It’s in stark contrast to the last presidential cycle where Bernie Sanders and Trump took note of the average wage rates of average Americans, and then both spoke of the elites, and everybody knows that big business and those folks want cheap labor to maximize their profits. That clearly is true, but who pays the tab? And the answer is the American people.”
Rep. Brat continued, “Who’s paying the bill? Not the big businesses who want the cheap labor. This is a cynical move where a group of Republicans who’ve received support from the party and otherwise are going against the will of the 90 percent of the Republican base, 70 percent of the American people on this issue, right after primary season where they no longer have to answer to the American people.”
Congressman Brat concluded, “This issue more than anything exemplifies the difference between the elites and the common worker. The swamp is always about money. We just did the omnibus to get nine Senate Democratic votes.”
Rep. Brat asked rhetorically, “Now, we’re going to go to the American people to give a terrible DACA deal when the swamp got the omnibus win?”
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