King Rails Against Big Money, Special Interests at Immigration Presser

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) railed against the special interests, big money, and crony capitalism behind the “Gang of Eight” Senate immigration bill in response to a question from Breitbart News at a press conference turned-anti-amnesty rally.

“I wanted to ask you guys, yesterday on his show, Rush Limbaugh talked about how there’s all these special interests and big money behind this push for this Gang of Eight bill, if you could address that really quick please,” Breitbart News asked the congressman.

King responded that he sees “the big money part of this, there is a strong push on the part of the U.S. Chamber and there’s also business interests out there that want cheap labor.”

“And the equation, I’ve long described it this way, is that I think about it like the weights on a bar bell,” King said. “On one side of this, there are the Democrats that see it as a political gain for them. And really the net effect of it is ‘yes we know it’s going to be 2 to 1 or more votes for them if they can do what they’re trying to do over there.'” 

“That’s why there’s almost universal support for amnesty on the part of the Democrats,” King explained. “There’s also Democrats that get cheap labor out of the deal. Then on the other side of that there’s Republicans that are looking at it from the cheap labor standpoint.” 

King added that he thinks big business special interests, like many politicians, do not have the interests of the American people at heart.

“When I was first elected to Congress, I went up to Wall Street,” King said. “I actually had the chance to put my finger on the toggle that rings the opening bell; it’s pretty neat.” 

But I met with a lot of CEOs around during that period of time. And I believed all the way up to that time that Wall Street was taking care of the financial foundations in America. That they would be looking ahead a decade, a generation, a century, to make sure that the underpinning principles of America stayed in place. When we left that city, I told my wife: “They’re not. They’re looking at the next quarterly report and they’ll rake what they need to out of that and they’ll only worry about that far ahead.” That’s kind of where we are with a lot of these big money interests. Corporations have no right to push politically this amnesty act on the American people for cheap labor and then send you the bill. They have no right to send you the bill. That’s what’s going on.

Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) jumped in after King’s response to say: “Let me add to that. There was a guy, I don’t know if he’s still here, who had a sign that said ‘DC = District of Cronyism.’ That’s a great sign.” 

“I remember what my great hero Ronald Reagan said,” Weber recounted. “He said, ‘Politicians and diapers were a lot alike. They need to be changed frequently, usually for the same reason.’ Anybody that votes for that cronyism that’s moving through the Senate needs to be changed and I think you agree.”