“To me, it’s a little bit like Obamacare,” Paul said at this week’s hearing. “I hate to bring that up, but 1,800 references to the secretary shall at a later date decide things. We don’t write bills around here. We should write the bill. We should write the plan. We should do these things to secure the border whether it be fence, entry, exit, we should write it, not delegate it. What’s going to happen in five years if they don’t do their job — maybe not even them, maybe somebody else who doesn’t do their job in five years, and the border is not secured? We will be blamed for the next 10 million that come here illegally.”
Republican senator Marco Rubio has been one of the most active proponents of an immigration reform act, but now another conservative lawmaker — Rand Paul — is harshly critiquing the bill.
When Sen. Rubio (R-Florida) first endorsed the bipartisan immigration reform bill being touted by the so-called congressional “Gang of Eight,” the up-and-coming lawmaker’s approval was signaled as a sign that conservative colleagues on Capitol Hill would soon follow suit. Rubio has since warned that the bill isn’t guaranteed to get all the way to US President Barack Obama’s desk, though, and the immigration act has found an opponent in Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky).
Speaking before the Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing on Tuesday this week, Sen. Paul said that not only does he have his doubts the bill will pass but that he’s concerned over with what the act would actually do.
“It may pass the Senate [but] may not pass the House,” said the senator. “I want to be constructive in making the bill strong enough that conservatives, myself included, conservative Republicans in the House will vote for this because I think immigration reform is something we should do.”
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