Donald Trump Threatens Veto of Cheap Drug Bill — but Not Farmworker Amnesty

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President Donald Trump’s deputies say he will veto the Democrats’ pending drug bill — but have not threatened to veto a Democrat bill to amnesty at least one million illegals and encourage foreign H-2A visa workers to take agriculture jobs from American agriculture workers.

The amnesty bill has the apparent support of more than 20 GOP farm district legislators and is slated to get a floor debate and House vote on Wednesday.

“It is frankly astounding that the White House did not issue a veto threat on H.R. 5038,”  a Capitol Hill source told Breitbart News, adding:

This bill betrays the President’s longstanding desire to encourage American employers – including agriculture – to hire American workers. Worse, this bill amnesties over a million illegal aliens. President Trump won the presidency in no small part because he understands the American people want no part of this. Today the White House cared more about ruffling feathers in the agribusiness community rather than taking a hard line on behalf of the voters he needs for a second term.

One of the bill’s sponsors, GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) claimed in the December 8 Yakima Herald-Republic that Trump supports the amnesty-and-replacement bill:

This is exactly the kind of merit-based immigration reform President Trump has been calling for.

I spoke directly with President Trump about the Farm Workforce Modernization Act and the need for a solution for our farmers. He agreed: We must provide relief now. As the bill moves through the legislative process, I am committed to working with my Senate colleagues in order to send the best possible version of this bill to the president’s desk for signature.

The veto threat was announced Tuesday afternoon for the Democrats’ drug bill, H.R. 3:

…. In its current form, H.R. 3 would likely undermine access to lifesaving medicines.  This bill would also compromise the health of Americans by dramatically reducing the incentive to bring innovative therapeutics to market. The preliminary Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis indicates that the bill would reduce the number of new medicines coming to market. The Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) finds that H.R. 3’s price controls would affect as much as one third of drugs under development, meaning that out of 300 projected new medicines that would otherwise be approved over 10 years by the Food and Drug Administration, 100 could be severely delayed or never developed. As a result, CEA estimates H.R. 3 would erase a quarter of the expected gains in life expectancy in the United States over the next decade.

If H.R. 3 were presented to the President in its current form, he would veto the bill.

The GOP sponsors of the amnesty-and-replacement include several of the most business-friendly GOP leaders and several former GOP leaders in the House: Reps. Mark Amodei (R-NV-02), James Baird (R-IN-04), Susan W. Brooks (R-IN-05), Tom Cole (R-OK-04), John Curtis  (R-UT-03), Rodney Davis (R-IL-13), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL-25), Bob Gibbs (R-OH-07), Doug LaMalfa (R-CA-01), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA-05), Paul Mitchell (R-MI-10), Dan Newhouse (R-WA-04), Devin Nunes (R-CA-22), Tom Reed (R-NY-23), Mike Simpson (R-ID-02), Elise Stefanik (R-NY-21), Steve Stivers (R-OH-15), Fred Upton (R-MI-06), Greg Walden (R-OR-02), and Don Young (R-AK-At Large).

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