On Thursday, 50 Senators in the Democrat caucus ensured that history will remember them for casting the decisive votes that enabled President Barack to enact his executive amnesty after the midterm elections, putting the interests of the pro-amnesty Masters of the Universe over American sovereignty and workers.
Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) came one vote short of forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to allow amendments to the continuing resolution and bring up a vote on the House bill that would defund Obama’s future executive amnesty. Obama, after delaying his executive amnesty to help Senate Democrats retain control of the Senate, has promised he would act on executive amnesty by the end of the year.
Though Sens. Kay Hagan (D-NC), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), all of whom are facing tough reelection fights due to Obama’s proposed executive amnesty, joined Joe Manchin (D-WV) and 45 Republican Senators to vote for Sessions’ motion to deny Reid’s ability to block amendments, 50 other Senators joined Reid, including Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK), who is a vulnerable Democrat in a red state.
Sessions’ motion failed by one vote, which means the Senate Democrats who voted with Reid, in essence, voted for Obama’s executive amnesty.
Before the vote, Sessions, whom Facebook board member Marc Andreessen called “clinically insane” for putting the interests of American workers first, said that “Senators in this chamber will cast one of the most important votes they’ll ever cast in the Senate” that “will steer the future course of our country and our congress and, particularly, the Senate.”
He said Senators will decide “whether their allegiance is to President Obama and his agenda, Majority Leader Reid and the open borders lobby, or whether their allegiance is to the American worker, the Constitutional order and the American people and this nation’s sovereign laws.”
“This is a moment of choosing for every Senator,” Sessions said, declaring that he would ensure the voices of Americans who are against executive amnesty would be heard. “Where will history record you stood in face of the president’s promise to unlawfully nullify immigration law in america? If you believe we are a sovereign nation with the right to control our borders… then you must vote ‘yes’ for this… If you go along with the idea that America is an oligarchy run by a group of special interests meeting at the White House that just rewrites laws, immigration laws of America, then you vote “no.”
Cruz, whose signature line is urging Americans to “make D.C. listen,” said that “amnesty is coming” if Senators do not vote to defund Obama’s executive amnesty and noted that Obama’s delaying his executive action until after the midterms is one of the most cynical things he has seen in Washington. Cruz said Obama is “saying he understands the American people don’t want amnesty,” but he intends to still enact it after the election.
“If Senate Democrats want to embrace amnesty, let them do so,” Cruz said, emphasizing that Americans are tired of Senators, “particularly in red states,” who “go home to their states and say amnesty’s a terrible thing and then come back here and facilitate” Obama’s plans to grant illegal immigrants amnesty.
“How about we have some honesty? How about we have elected members of this body say and do the same thing in Washington that they say and do back home?” asked Cruz, whom the Washington establishment hates because he is trying to live up to his campaign promises instead of letting Washington change him.
He said this “cynicism is fundamentally inconsistent with the obligation every member of this body owes to our constituents” and warned Senators that the “American people understand what’s going on and I don’t think they’re going to be fooled by the president’s delaying his illegal amnesty until after the election.”
Cruz said so long as “these children believe they’ll get amnesty, they’ll keep coming illegally, and keep being victimized and abused.”
Lee echoed Cruz’s concerns and noted that the continuing resolution would fund “any other executive amnesty the president may choose to implement illegally.” He said that the most important thing Obama can do to stop the crisis at the border and the exploitation of illegal immigrant juveniles is to end the Deferred Action program.
“He also needs to involve an effort to resist the temptation to further expand DACA to millions of additional adults,” Lee said.
Lee also said that “by announcing to the world that he will not enforce our nation’s laws,” Obama is only “encouraging hundreds of thousands of children and adults to make a very dangerous journey to the U.S. illegally.”
“He’s encouraging families to pay coyotes controlled by drug cartels thousands of dollars to smuggle their children into this country,” Lee continued.
Sessions also mentioned these concerns, but he primarily highlighted the interests of American workers, which he has relentlessly done throughout the amnesty debate to make the illegal immigration issue cut through the mainstream media’s and the Republican establishment’s filters. Sessions said that with “a casual stroke of a pen, Obama is “preparing to nullify the immigration laws of the United States” by giving work permits and social security numbers to illegal immigrants and assume the “absolute power” of who can enter, work, and live in the nation.
He said that ultimately “local school districts, local police departments, local taxpayers” have to pick up the tab for Obama’s lack of immigration enforcement and executive amnesty and said that “no nation can have a policy where people can simply show up at the border and demand to be released” into the country.
“What about what’s in the interest of the American people?” Sessions asked. “America is not an oligarchy. The masters of the universe… don’t get to meet at the White House and decide how to run this country.”
He noted that when the “American people learned what was in the Senate amnesty bill and guest worker bill that doubled the number of guest workers, for which every single Senate Democrat voted, the people said ‘no, no, no.'”
“So I have a message today to all the special interests, the global elites, the activists, the cynical vote-counting politicians, plotters that are meeting in secret at the White house, and this message is this: You don’t get to sit in a room and rewrite the laws of this United states of America. No, sir. Congress writes the laws,” Sessions said. “You may not be… used to people telling you ‘no,’ but I’m telling you ‘no’ today.”
Sessions said that it is “critical that our Senate Democrats are willing to say ‘no,’ too, today when we vote.”
Sessions also had a message for the American people: “You have been right from the beginning. You have justly demanded that our borders be controlled, our laws enforced and that, at long last, immigration policy serves the needs of our own people first.”
“For this virtuous and legitimate demand, you have been demeaned, even scorned by the governing class,” he continued.
Sessions mocked the “cosmopolitan elite” who think “they know so much” and “want you to believe that your concerns are somehow illegitimate, that you are wrong for being worried about your jobs or your schools or your hospitals or your communities or your national security.”
“These elite citizens of the world speak often of their concern about people living in poverty overseas and yet they turn a blind eye to the poverty and suffering in their own country. They don’t want you to speak up either,” he said. “They don’t want you to be heard. They don’t want you to feel you have a vote, but you do have a voice, American people. And your message is being heard. And I’m delivering that message to the senate today.”
“[Obama’s executive amnesty] would establish for people all over theworld the principle that if you can get into America, you canstay in America, and even be given lawful right to work,” he said.
He spoke about ICE officials who filed a lawsuit alleging that they have been “barred from fulfilling heir oaths to follow the law” because they cannot arrest “illegal aliens solelyon the charge of illegal entry or visa overstay, the two mostfrequently violated sections of U.S. immigration law.”
“If no one is going to deport you, why would you return if youchoose not to return to your home country?” Sessions asked.
Sessions also said after the House listened and stopped the Senate’s amnesty bill, the “same groups who wrote this bill are workingwith the White House to extract the same benefits by executivefiat.”
Noting that “every Senate Democrat is the president’s partner in this scheme,” Sessions asked where is the courage and independence that Senators should have to “stand up to the political class, the lobbyists,the party bosses” and “to stand by the side of the Americanpeople.” He noted that if Congress leaves town “withouthaving passed a bill to block this executive amnesty, then itwill be a permanent stain on the Senate, on the Constitutionalorder, and this entire Democratic caucus.”
“It’s time to stand up and be counted for the working people ofthis country and to enact legislation in their interest,” Sessions said.
But he fell one vote short, which means that the 50 Senators who stood with Reid to block amendments to the continuing resolution will ultimately be responsible for the consequences of Obama’s planned executive amnesty.