We hope everyone enjoys their day today by celebrating the labor movement and contributions American workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
To read about the history of Labor Day, click here.
A small but loud group booed and heckled Florida Sen. Marco Rubio while he tried to give a speech at a conservative conference here Friday, a sign that his support for a bipartisan immigration bill has hurt him within some elements of the Republican Party.
“No Amnesty!” several people shouted when Rubio walked to the lectern at the Defending the American Dream Summit, an annual gathering of Republicans and conservatives organized by the advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. (More.....)
"We believe strongly that fixing the immigration system makes for a healthier American economy and must attract individuals from around the world," said Matt Sonnesyn, director of research for the Business Roundtable.With a current unemployment rate of 7.4% and unemployment rates increasing in 28 states we do not need to import workers from around the world, there are plenty of unemployed and under employed Americans that can fill the labor force needed!
"We are making sure we have the labor force needed, especially in the service industries, so as the economy gets cooking, we're better able to maintain productivity."
He also is encouraged to see House lawmakers, especially those in leadership, consistently talking about need for a careful process.
"They are talking about how to move it forward, not about how to kill it," he said.
With clipboard in hand and "don't tread on me" rattlesnake earrings dangling, Jenny Beth Martin, the woman sometimes described as the tea party's den mother, stood guard over the microphone at a Capitol Hill protest of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.
. . .
The uproar has revived media attention and renewed the intensity of many tea-party supporters. Just last week, Mrs. Martin says, the Patriots received a new letter from the IRS asking for additional information about the group's activities, including copies of all direct-mail solicitations and telemarketing scripts before the 2012 election and any advertising materials in 2013. "This is beyond anger and frustration," she says.
. .
Today, health care has returned to the forefront as activists urge lawmakers to strip funds needed to implement the new health law, while also protesting a proposed overhaul of the immigration system. [emphasis added]
Once the House of Representatives returns after Labor Day, immigration will likely top members' legislative agenda, Arizona's senators said at a town-hall meeting on Tuesday.
“It will be a critical time in the life or death of this legislation,” Sen. John McCain, (R) said about the immigration reform bill the Senate passed in June.McCain discussed the bill with his junior colleague, Sen. Jeff Flake, (R) in their home state at a roundtable focused on the issue, hosted by The Arizona Republic, 12 News, and azcentral.com.
McCain and Flake are both members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight,” which also includes Sens. Michael Bennet, (D-Colo.), Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), Robert Menendez, (D-N.J.), Marco Rubio, (R-Fla.), and Charles Schumer, (D-N.Y.). The group wrote and championed the immigration reform bill through the upper chamber in June. The final vote was 68-32.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he won’t take it up in the House.
“I remain guardedly optimistic,” McCain said about the House advancing immigration reform. The senator said he hopes the House will pass legislation so the two chambers can go to conference and compromise on a single bill that will eventually go to the president.
. . .
Enhanced border security, an E-Verify system for employers and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants already living illegally in the United States are some of the notable provisions of the comprehensive bill, which is more than 1,000 pages.
“Comprehensive” today is a euphemism for interminably long, poorly drafted, and entirely unread — not just by the people’s representatives but by our robed rulers, too (how many of those Supreme Court justices actually plowed through every page of Obamacare when its “constitutionality” came before them?).
Sen. Ted Cruz on Sunday doubled down on his call to arms in “defunding Obamacare,” even if Senate Democrats are highly unlikely to approve any short-term spending deal this September that impugns President Obama’s signature domestic achievement.
Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican, said that if the GOP-controlled House could pass a continuing resolution that strips the Affordable Care Act of funding this September, a “grass-roots tsunami” of opposition to the health care law could force the Senate to relent.
The GOP, he told CNN, has to do something it hasn’t done in a long time: “Stand up and win the argument.”
. . .On health care, Mr. Cruz said Mr. Obama’s law is a “job killer” that has forced businesses to drop coverage or shift workers to part-time status. He said these changes have an outsized effect on the most vulnerable, including minorities and single moms.
Rising to an oft-repeated challenge, Mr. Cruz offered three health care reforms that Republican[s] may support in lieu of Mr. Obama’ plan.
He said that Americans should be allowed to build up health savings accounts in a tax-advantaged way, that health coverage should be “personal and portable” and divorced from employment, and that consumers should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines instead of quarantining policy options to the individual states.