Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) on Monday was unable to offer his plan to address the millions of undocumented immigrants currently residing in the U.S.
On Bloomberg’s “With All Due Respect” co-host Mark Halperin repeatedly asked Huelskamp what he would do in lieu of President Obama’s planned executive action.
“If you were president and Congress would pass whatever you wanted, what would you do about the 5 million, the 12 million who are in this country illegally now?” Halperin asked.
Huelskamp responded by saying that he doesn’t know how many people are here illegally. And when Halperin pressed again, the congressman threw in a line about the importance of border security.
Halperin then told Huelskamp to put aside numbers and the state of border security, and asked if he was for deportation or letting some undocumented immigrants stay.
“Nobody in Washington I know of is talking about deportation. That’s what the president would like us to talk about,” Huelskamp responded.
The congressman continued to dodge Halperin’s questions, and instead continued to harp on Obama’s plan to “grant amnesty.”
“We’re willing to sit down and negotiate and compromise, but we’re not going to grant amnesty,” he said. “And the president might try to do that. I think that’s when he’s going to run into a problem not just with the House of Representatives and a new Republican majority in the Senate, but the American people have rejected amnesty.
Slate’s Betsy Woodruff this week asked multiple Republican members of Congress to explain the term “amnesty.” The answers varied greatly, and many lawmakers seemed confused by the question.
Watch the Bloomberg News clip:
If you took the biggest chronic-complainer know-it-alls at the coffee machine in the office break room, the ones who spend most of their time goofing off and talking about how stupid the boss is, and put them in charge of Congress—oh wait, we did that.
It’s not that the GOP can’t define “amnesty,” it’s that they won’t because they’ll end up pissing off either their base or everybody outside their base. They want to leave it nebulous so they can maintain that there’s some solution that will please everybody, some way they can please the loonies who demand every “illegal” out and a wall built while also pleasing those who want to allow hardworking immigrants to stay and get their own piece of the pie.
If I had to guess I’d say their proposed solution will begin and end with electing a Republican president in 2016. That will be the solution for everything. Perfect answers to all the most vexing questions will bloom forth like flowers after a desert rain.
Teatroll Rosetta stone says: “I’m not here to govern, Mark…just to stop everyone else from doing so.”
kudos to the congressman for completing the GOP charm school class in not publically sharing your thoughts 101.