The Immigration Bill: Why a Vote for Nothing Makes Sense

Dear Cleveland Patriot,

As you know, the destructive amnesty bill passed the Senate last week, with 14 Republican traitors supporting it.

Now the fight in the House begins, and this is a very important week if we are to win this fight. 

The members of the House are home this week for Independence Day.  They return to DC next week to hold a special meeting on the 10th to discuss immigration only.

It is important that they hear from us this week, before that special meeting on the 10th.

Our Message to Our Representatives

Don't Vote for Anything

Right now we are being told that the House has flat out rejected the Senate bill, and that the goal of the House is to pass legislation through a piecemeal approach, making border security and enforcement a priority.

While I'm sure we all agree that border security and its enforcement take priority, if a bill gets put through the House it will go to conference.  At this point, what started as a good bill could be distorted by combining it with the Senate bill, and do we really want more empty promises on border control?  If they would just enforce the laws that have been put in place since 1986, our efforts could be better spent on the priorities of Americans like jobs and the economy.

Also, once a bill reaches conference we, as citizens, lose much of our control.  Speaker Boehner will decide who takes part in the conference, and we all know that he will not pick a strong conservative.  Not to mention that Paul Ryan appears to have become the "Marco Rubio" of the House. Click Here to Read More

The only way to stop this push for amnesty is for our Representatives to vote for nothing, even if it's a border protection bill.

Why a Vote for Nothing Makes Sense

It's All About the Timing

The goal of the House is to have the immigration issue settled by the August recess.

If we can stall the process long enough, whereas nothing gets voted on in July, the issue will lose steam over the break.

When Congress returns in the fall, they will have the debt ceiling and the continuing resolution to deal with, flatlining the immigration debate.

Call Your Reps Today, and Every Day This Week

Please click here to find contact information for your Representative.

Please remind your representative that their job is to REPRESENT their constituents, not illegals and big business.

Remind them that the purpose of immigration policy must be for the benefit of American society.  Many illegals don't want amnesty. They don't want to be Americans, pay taxes and assimilate Click Here to Read More

Remind them that our government serves at the consent of our citizens, not the consent of aliens and their governments.

Remind them that there are already laws that, if enforced, would solve the border security issue (see Failed Timeline article here).  

h/t Marianne G

And They Said There is No War on Coal!

This past Tuesday President Obama, again through regulation over legislation, unveiled new tighter rules for power plants that will include a push for more restrictive green building codes and costly restrictions on household appliances.

The economy of Ohio, the state that is America’s 4^th-largest user of coal, faces a grave threat from these proposed EPA regulations that would halt coal use in existing electric power plants and prevent the building of new coal-burning plants.

That’s a dangerous move with the economy still struggling to recover, especially in Ohio where an enormous share of our power – 78 percent – is generated with coal (nationwide, the share is 43 percent).

The rules will kill many of the 27,000 Ohio jobs dependent on the coal industry. Not to mention the devastating impact on jobs and the economy in other coal producing and coal dependent states. Business and residential utility customers will certainly face greater risk of electricity price spikes as we rely for power generation more on natural gas (with its historically volatile price) and less on coal (with its historically stable, lower prices).

While it is vital to the future of our country that we use our natural resources to diversify our energy portfolio, it is only prudent to allow the technology of these other sources to grow through free market investment by the private sector – not government mandates.

Advancing technology already allows utilities to burn coal cleaner than in the past. Soon, coal-fired power plants that emit virtually no carbon dioxide will be feasible. But with President Obama & his EPA continuing their War on Coal by trying to make air cleaner than God himself ever intended, that will never be allowed to happen.

For highlights of President Obama's new plan to cut carbon, click here.  For a PDF of the complete action plan (assault), click here.

The American Retirement Death Spiral

From Tea Party Patriots --

Veronique de Rugy spells out exactly why Social Security is unsustainable:

A single man earning the average wage ($43,500 in 2011) who retired in 1980 would have paid a total of $96,000 in Social Security taxes and received lifetime benefits of $203,000, or about 211 percent of contributions. A single man earning the average wage but retiring in 2010 faces a vastly different situation: He would have paid $294,000 in taxes to receive benefits of just $265,000, or about 90 percent of contributions. For the same person retiring in 2030, taxes of $398,000 yield $336,000 in benefits, or just 84 percent of contributions.

These numbers were found, according to de Rugy, “C. Eugene Steuerle and Stephanie Rennae, researchers at the liberal Urban Institute.” (Readers may remember Tea Party Patriots examined a report on the federal budget co-authored by Steuerle earlier this year.) Clearly, this system is both unsustainable – the Trust Fund for Social Security is projected to be empty in the near future – and not a good investment for retirees.

What happens if you combine Medicare benefits with Social Security benefits? The disparity between taxes and benefits for single men and women in 1960, 1980, 2010, 2020, and 2030 are enormous, according to Steuerle and Caleb Quakenbush: 

There you have it. The 15.3% of your income that goes to your Medicare and Social Security retirement benefits is to not be around for much longer without changes, but they’re going to keep paying you less and less per dollar of forced investment. The only way out of this death spiral is aggressive reform.

Oh, and the life of these programs? Amnesty will shorten this already bleak life expectancy.

Our Path to Self-Governance: Ohio House Introduces Health Care Compact

PRESS RELEASE June 27, 2013 For Immediate Release Contact:  Marianne Gasiecki  Mansfieldteaparty@gmail.com

Health Care Compact 

Introduced in Ohio House

Our Path to Self Governance

Columbus, OH - June 27, 2013 - The Health Care Compact is an interstate compact that gives each individual state control over the federal health care dollars spent within that state, and the authority to determine the best system of health care for its citizens, without interference from the federal government.

The Health Care Compact (HB 227) was introduced into the Ohio House by co-sponsors Rep. Wes Retherford and Rep. Terry Boose Thursday morning. "We've been working very closely with Reps Retherford and Boose, as well as others, over the past few months," said Marianne Gasiecki, State Co-coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. "They asked the tough questions, and have a thorough understanding of the benefits of a long term solution like the health care compact."

The federal government has been garnering more and more centralized power. The most recent display of this power was via the, arguably, most influential agency of the federal government, the IRS. The IRS would be the agency responsible for ensuring the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act.

Ohio would be the ninth state to pass the health care compact, which must then receive a simple majority up or down vote in the US Congress. The health care compact is a critical step towards state sovereignty and self-governance, bringing accountability and the decision making process closer to the people.

To learn more about the Health Care Compact, contact Marianne Gasiecki at mansfieldteaparty@gmail.com.

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To watch a short video about the Health Care Compact, click here.

No Fence Required: Reason # 9,742 the Immigration Reform (Amnesty) Bill Should Fail

Since the Corker/Hoeven amendment was inserted into the amnesty bill on Friday, its corrupt and costly components have been slowly coming to light. Here are three more reasons the bill needs to fail.

First, from Breitbart, explicit evidence the much-ballyhooed fence in the Corker/Hoeven amendment is not required in the legislation:

Another loophole inserted into the new version of the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill allows Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano (or any of her successors) to nix the construction of a required border security fence if she does not find it to be an “appropriate” use of resources.

The new version of the bill was introduced via a so-called “border surge” amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repackaging the whole bill into the amendment.

The practical implications are clear:

This could allow illegal aliens to be granted amnesty, or legalized “Registered Provisional Immigration (RPI)” status, once Secretary Napolitano submits a fencing (and border security) plan to Congress. However, this provision allows Napolitano to decide against building the fence after doing so, with no legal ramifications.

Here is the language in the bill itself, from National Support Team member Shonda Werry:

Just as disturbing is how few Senators actually know what’s in the bill for employment purposes. From The Weekly Standard:

On Tuesday afternoon, THE WEEKLY STANDARD asked five different U.S. Senators about this problem. These five senators, all Democrats, voted to cut off debate Monday night on the revised immigration bill, but none of them knew if the bill would create a financial incentive for some employers to hire amnestied immigrants instead of American citizens.

However, backers of the law are getting cover from a fairly prominent mainstream media source: Glenn Kessler at The Fact Checker. First, Kessler claims “there is little evidence” to support the idea that employers would have a large incentive to hire immigrants over American citizens because of Obamacare. This despite 5 Senators, including one of the key people in writing Obamacare, don’t know the answer…and Kessler’s several significant updates and qualifiers to his original “fact-check.”

More recently, Kessler claims Senators had plenty of time to read and understand the bill between the addition of the Corker/Hoeven amendment and the cloture vote on Monday. His declaration relies on a couple of very tenuous statements: First, because the Congressional Budget Office can assess legislation, Congress’s staffers be able to as well. Second, many of the staffers examined various components of the bill for weeks before it was introduced. Lastly, he says the Senate’s strongly worded Suggestions (AKA Rules) were followed to a “T” by those who say the bill is too complex to understand in three days – and by following the “rules,” they made things more complex.

Kessler forgets the difference between staffers and members. It doesn’t matter if staffers understand the bill. The problem is that Members of Congress, the people voting on bills, don’t. Finally, whether or not things were made more difficult by Senators opposed to amnesty is moot,  the complexity of the bill itself is unrelated to procedural posturing. .

So, in short:

1. The required border fence before legalization? Not required at all.
2. The bill is so complex at least 5 amnesty-supporting Senators don’t know the answer to a very important question about it.
3. Understanding the bill is exceedingly difficult – and Congress should not be passing bills it does not understand.

Keep up the fight, everyone. We can stop this disaster of a bill where it stands – just keeping calling your Senators with these facts, and tell your neighbors and friends to do the same.

Shamnesty bill and amendment get the votes for cloture

Despite the floods of calls from patriot groups, NumbersUSA, and bloggers opposed to immigration amnesty bill S 744, the Senate today voted in late afternoon, 67-32 for Cloture to cut off debate on a bill amendment that nobody has read, moving the bill closer to passage.  

From The Hill, here are the shamnesty RINOs, including members of the Gang of 8, who voted YES:

John McCain (Ariz.)

Lindsey Graham (S.C.)

Marco Rubio (Fla.)

Jeff Flake (Ariz.)

Bob Corker (Tenn.)

Lamar Alexander (Tenn.)

Kelly Ayotte (N.H.)

Jeff Chiesa (N.J.)

Susan Collins (Maine)

Orrin Hatch (Utah)

Dean Heller (Nev.)

Mark Kirk (Ill.)

John Hoeven (N.D.)

Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)

Roger Wicker (Miss.). 

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Note that Sen. Portman voted against the bill. Ohio calls from Tea Party Patriots made a difference, but we'll have to keep at it. CALL SENATE OFFICES TOMORROW: (202) 224-3121.

BETRAYED: Florida Patriot Groups Withdraw Support for Rubio over Immigration Reform Bill

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

24 June 2013

FOR MORE INFORMATION: 

Cynthia Lucas (772-221-0309) luckycin@comcast.net

The Martin 9/12 Committee Stuart, FL

Florida Patriot Groups Feel Betrayed 

by Senator Rubio & Continue Fight Against Immigration Bill

Withdrawal of support for Senator Rubio

— Conservative organizations throughout Florida have united in withdrawing support from Senator Rubio over a string of broken promises made to the American people regarding Immigration. In an April 16, 2013 letter from the Senator to Florida Patriot Groups, he pledged not to support legislation that is rushed through Congress, does not truly and legitimately secure our borders or that leads to further illegal immigration in the future. The current bill, current amendment and the rush to ram the bill through the Senate by week's end violate this letter and earlier public statements by the Senator. This bill will forever be known as the Rubio Amnesty bill. As a result, Patriot groups, including the Martin 9/12 Committee, are withdrawing their support for Senator Rubio and demand that he walk away from this bill.

These Patriot Groups announce "Kill the Bill" week beginning on Monday, June 24, 2013. Monday will be called "Bait and Switch Day" in honor of the ineffective and costly 1,000-plus page amendment to the bill allegedly to strengthen border security provisions of the bill. It is apparent that the Senate intends to pass an amnesty-first bill at all costs and that the amendment is only to give the appearance of increased border security. Given the fact that there is no enforcement of existing border security laws, Senator Rubio's support of this last minute amendment further erodes the public's trust in the Senator and erodes the public's trust in the ability of the federal government to protect its citizens. On Monday, citizens are urged to call and email Senator Rubio and Senator Nelson urging them to kill this amendment. Most importantly, they are urged to visit the Senator Rubio's local office and deliver a signed "You have lost our trust and support, Kill the Bill!" statement.

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