Our Capitol Hill team has just been told that House Speaker Hastert (R-IL) and other House GOP leaders have apparently caved to Sen. Lieberman (D-CT) on his insistance that a 9/11 Response security bill CANNOT inconvenience illegal aliens.
The House GOP leadership is said to be willing to gut the bill's provisions to forbid drivers licenses drivers licenses and other assistance to illegal aliens. Those provisions were approved by an overwhelming bi-partisan majority of the House earlier this fall.
It appears now that an agreement to bring the bill to the floors of the House and Senate has occurred, although it is not being publicly announced yet -- even to the full Membership of Congress. But we have several confirmations that the deal is set behind closed doors.
We need every one of you to call your Representative and two Senators and urge them to vote AGAINST this bill
If you get an answering machine, leave a message that starts with: "Vote against the 9/11 Conference Committee bill. It provides no security from terrorists exploiting our broken immigration system."
Or "Kill the 9/11 Conference Committee bill. It fails to address the immigration loopholes that allowed the terrorist killings in the first place."
Call tonight. Call again Saturday morning beginning around 8 a.m. EST.
You can find the phone numbers by clicking on or using this link:
http://www.NumbersUSA.com/myMembers (you'll need to be a member)
or look them up at these two sites.
http://www.house.gov/writerep/http://www.senate.gov/general/conta...enators_cfm.cfmPlease call your Representative first and then your Senators. Our best chance is to hurt this bill in the House.
Details are still a bit sketchy, but it appears that what broke the logjam may have been a ludicrous substitute from Sen. Lieberman. Instead of effectively banning drivers licenses for all illegal aliens, Sen. Lieberman has proposed that the 13 states which currently allow licenses for illegals would be grandfathered in and continue to be havens for foreign terrorists, criminals and other illegal aliens.
Those states are:
Alaska and Delaware
Hawaii and Missouri
Nevada and Oregon
Rhode Island and Texas
Utah and Vermont
Washington, West Virginia and Michigan
In addition, Sen. Lieberman's proposal provided a way for additional states to also become ID havens for illegal aliens.
If all of this sounds a little silly, you now understand why Sen. Lieberman's office today was telling many of you that the Senator in fact is supporting provisions that deal with illegal aliens and drivers licenses. It was just a lot of legal turns of phrase disguised to confuse some people into thinking it did something that it didn't.
The key factor here is that Republican House leadership is panicked that it will look bad if Congress adjourns for the year this weekend without passing a 9/11 bill.
The second key factor is that the Senate and House Democratic leadership would not allow a bill that deals with immigration.
Thus, the GOP House leadership has blinked.
It is terribly sad that after that same leadership had made such grand speeches about the essential nature of the immigration provisions earlier this fall and performed with such attention to the needs and desires of the American people, those same leaders have now chosen political expediency.
The 9/11 Families for Secure America issued a press release urging Congress to defeat this bill that was supposed to address the nation's deficiencies that allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"America will still be as vulnerable as it was on Sep. 11, 2001," the organization said about the negotiated compromise bill. "We ask that Members of Congress stand with our organization that represents over 300 victims' families.
"We will not forget, nor will we let America forget, those Members of Congress who choose to protect illegal aliens over American citizens. The next terrorist attack will be because of their lack of leadership as a Member of Congress."
Those 300 families are not amused at the political games that were played in Washington this week. They feel their murdered loved ones have been disregarded as mere props for political posturing. Another sad day.
But your work has not been in vain this week. We can either help kill this bill or create enough opposition to be an embarrassment to those who perpetrated it.