- Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:28 pm
#53306
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — It’s time to put up or shut up. That was the message to Senate Republican hardliners including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Jeff Sessions of Alabama from House Speaker John Boehner on Tuesday.
“It’s time for Sen. Cruz and Sen. Sessions and Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats to stand with the American people and to block the president’s actions,” Boehner told reporters after a closed-door House Republican meeting.
Boehner noted that the House has already “won this fight,” by passing legislation to fund the Homeland Security Department while blocking Obama’s new policies to curb deportation. “This fight must be won in the United States Senate,” he said.
Cruz and Sessions often disrupted Boehner’s strategy on immigration in the last Congress. The House rejected immigration reform that passed the Senate.
Cruz has pushed the Senate leadership to be tough on immigration, labeling Obama an emperor. “All across this country, Republicans campaigned saying, ‘If you elect a Republican Senate, we will stop President Obama’s illegal amnesty.’ My very simple suggestion to my colleagues and friends in the Republican Party is we need to honor what we said,” Cruz said on Fox News in late December.
Sessions, too, has pushed his colleagues to take a confrontational stance on the issue. Sessions last month became the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee.
Senate Democrats are expected to block Republican efforts to bring up the House measure funding Homeland Security on Tuesday. The vote would show that no funding measure with language blocking Obama’s immigration orders can pass the Senate. The agency runs out of money on Feb. 27.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday Republicans should not block funding for Homeland Security because of a “fit of pique” over Obama’s immigration executive orders.
“It’s time for Sen. Cruz and Sen. Sessions and Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats to stand with the American people and to block the president’s actions,” Boehner told reporters after a closed-door House Republican meeting.
Boehner noted that the House has already “won this fight,” by passing legislation to fund the Homeland Security Department while blocking Obama’s new policies to curb deportation. “This fight must be won in the United States Senate,” he said.
Cruz and Sessions often disrupted Boehner’s strategy on immigration in the last Congress. The House rejected immigration reform that passed the Senate.
Cruz has pushed the Senate leadership to be tough on immigration, labeling Obama an emperor. “All across this country, Republicans campaigned saying, ‘If you elect a Republican Senate, we will stop President Obama’s illegal amnesty.’ My very simple suggestion to my colleagues and friends in the Republican Party is we need to honor what we said,” Cruz said on Fox News in late December.
Sessions, too, has pushed his colleagues to take a confrontational stance on the issue. Sessions last month became the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee.
Senate Democrats are expected to block Republican efforts to bring up the House measure funding Homeland Security on Tuesday. The vote would show that no funding measure with language blocking Obama’s immigration orders can pass the Senate. The agency runs out of money on Feb. 27.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday Republicans should not block funding for Homeland Security because of a “fit of pique” over Obama’s immigration executive orders.