The House of Representatives passed a spending bill tonight that keeps the government lights on, but that also codifies President Obama’s ability to grant executive amnesty. How did your Republican Congressman vote? [read_more]
As we reported yesterday, Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA7) helped lead an effort to amend the so-called “CRomnibus” (CR for continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, omnibus for all the various other goodies packed into the bill) to strip the president of any authority to implement his executive amnesty plan.
Unfortunately, as Ken Cuccinelli explained in a blast email earlier this evening and on a Facebook post (below), GOP leadership played some procedural games to put the kibosh and that effort:
So, tonight the House had to take up the vote without any amendment addressing executive amnesty. Ultimately the bill passed by one vote over 50%: 219-to-206, with 10 courageous leaders deciding not to vote at all. That means the bill heads over to the Senate, which has two days to pass it without the government running out of money.
So how did Virginia’s Republican delegation end up voting (after leaving Dave Brat all alone on the rule vote)?
In the end, Representatives Rob Wittman, Morgan Griffith, and Robert Hurt joined Brat in opposing the measure. Kudos to these guys for standing up against all the pressure, and for doing the right thing.
Scott Rigell, Bob Goodlatte, Randy Forbes, and Frank Wolf all just voted to give the President the ability to give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. No doubt there are a lot of really, really good excuses to be rolled out in the coming days, but the bottom line is that these guys—along with most other Republicans—caved on one of the most important issues facing the country.
Have a nice day.
