Rep. Jim Jordan: ‘We Have to Fight’ for Border Appropriations Votes

The only plausible tool to remedy President Biden’s illegal border migration is for the GOP to insert clear rules in Congress’ complex spending bills during the fall, House judiciary chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said Thursday.

“The way our system works is: When you have a split government, you have to [win] on the appropriations bills,” Jordan told a committee hearing held in Arizona. He continued:

We are going to have to attach to the appropriation bills [policy statements saying] “Look, If you don’t start enforcing the law…  we’re not going to fund certain things.” [Exempting] our law enforcement, not Border Patrol, we need that … We’re going to have to do that if we’re going to remedy this situation. That’s how bad it is, that’s how serious it is.

“The appropriations process is going to be the big fight,” said Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), adding:

Play smarter, not harder … You got a debt ceiling. You got the appropriations. Finding these [border] programs, rules, agencies that are not authorized by Congress is a good step in the right direction …  Trust is a series of promises kept. I hope that you will look at us, and when appropriation season comes [say] “They told us they were going to march up there, they were going to use the power of the purse.”

“We have to use every bit of leverage or this is a deeply unserious exercise,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (FL) told the hearing, adding:

Whether or not [Americans get a border remedy] depends heavily on the House of Representatives, and particularly on this group and whether or not we will fight for them … You think we’re going to get President Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer to pass legislation without a fight? Or without demanding that it go in must-pass bills?

The appropriations fight will be difficult because it is dominated by business-first Republicans.

Many mainstream Republicans — such as Jordan — won many roles in the committees that hold hearings.

But many establishment Republicans won critical slots in the spending panels, as top GOP leaders zig-zag between their voters and their donors.

The Biden border disaster accelerates https://t.co/JlDBBQMdBN

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For example, the House appropriations committee is dominated by pro-establishment Republicans. Many of those Republicans voted for rural-economy amnesty, and are backed by the business-run Congressional Leadership Fund or by major Wall Street investors, such as Blackstone.

The committee includes pro-migration GOP members, such as Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA), and Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ). Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX), Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), and Rep. Michael Simpson (R-ID). The homeland security subcommittee is headed by David Joyce (R-OH), who voted for the farm labor amnesty bill in 2021.

Jordan and other GOP members at Jordan’s hearing hinted at the opposition from the GOP’s pro-migration wing.

‘We’ve been asleep at the wheel for a long period of time,” said Gosar.  The House’s “power over the [spending] purse has to return.”

“Republicans have failed too,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA). “We don’t need new laws we need to enforce our existing laws.”

“The only way we’re going to fix this is a fight,” said Jordan, adding:

We came here today to just underscore and to hear from people who’ve been living [the border migration] now for too long years, to hear from you on so we can go back and tell our [GOP] colleagues, “Look, we’re going to have to fight. We’re going to have to fight for the good people of Yuma county …[for] folks all over the country because every country is now impacted by 5 million illegal migrants coming into our country in the past two years. That’s what we pledged to do” [in Arizona].

McClintock laid out an immigration agenda that includes legislation to protect ordinary Americans from employers’ use of cheap migrant labor. Biden, he said:

Reversed the [President Donald Trump’s] successful policies and initiated an unprecedented illegal mass migration on a scale that no civilization in history has ever survived …. [now] 3.1 million illegal immigrants have been allowed into our country to violate our borders and demand billions of dollars of taxpayer resources that were supposed to be helping Americans.

McClintock’s calculation of 3.1 million illegal migrants adds up to roughly three migrants for every seven American births. But the 3.1 million estimate does not include another 3 million legal migrants, temporary workers, and illegals who arrived at airports.

“Every community will soon face the practical effects of this collapsed border,” McClintock continued:

We have to ask ourselves: How does it make our schools better to pack classrooms with non-English speaking students? How does it make our hospitals more accessible by flooding emergency rooms with illegals demanding care? How does it strengthen our social safety net by adding millions of impoverished individuals to a system that’s already strained to the breaking point? How does it make our children safer with fentanyl flooding our neighborhoods and killing nearly 300 Americans a day? How does it make our communities safer to introduce violent cartels into them and make it all but impossible to deport criminal illegal aliens? How does it help working Americans to undercut them by flooding the labor market with cheap illegal labor?

…

But there’s so much that can be done legislatively to assure this never happens again. The law requires every asylum claimant to be detained until their case is adjudicated. We need a title 42 type mechanism to assure that we have the capacity to enforce this law. Credible fear standards need to be tightened to prevent the admission of anyone who has a criminal record or who is passed through a safe country. Unaccompanied minors need to be returned safely to their own homes immediately. E-Verify should be required to streamline compliance with the law that protects Americans’ jobs, The current abuses of parole authority must be stopped. Well, the two parties are far apart on this issue as evidenced by the lack of any interest by the Democrats on this committee today to even address the crisis

The federal government has long operated an unpopular economic policy of Extraction Migration. This colonialism-like policy extracts vast amounts of human resources from needy countries and uses the imported workers, renters, and consumers to grow Wall Street and the economy.

The migrant inflow has successfully forced down Americans’ wages and also boosted rents and housing prices. The inflow has also pushed many native-born Americans out of careers in a wide variety of business sectors and contributed to the rising death rate of poor Americans.

The policy also sucks jobs and wealth from heartland states by subsidizing coastal investors with a flood of low-wage workers, high-occupancy renters, and government-aided consumers.

The population inflow also reduces the political clout of native-born Americans, because it allows elites to divorce themselves from the needs and interests of ordinary Americans.

A 54 percent majority of Americans say Biden is allowing a southern border invasion, according to an August 2022 poll commissioned by the left-of-center National Public Radio (NPR). The 54 percent “Invasion” majority included 76 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and even 40 percent of Democrats.