Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) accused Senate Democrats of “colluding” with President Obama and interest groups to delay an administrative amnesty that they voted for in July.
“The only thing that is more shocking than Senate Democrats’ support for the president’s planned executive amnesty is the cravenness of asking him to proceed beginning the day after the midterms,” Sessions said Friday. “They don’t care what you want, or what you think — they scorn and mock our good and decent citizens for wishing their laws to be enforced. Never in recent memory has the divide between the everyday citizen, and the political elite, been as wide as it is now.”
Sessions made the statement apropos of a Friday report that Senate Democrats were encouraging Obama to delay the executive actions that he promised would come by the end of summer. On Saturday, White House officials announced that they were deferring to the Democrats, many of whom have difficult reelection campaigns and would not act until after the election.
“Two White House officials said Obama concluded that circumventing Congress through executive actions on immigration during the campaign would politicize the issue and hurt future efforts to pass a broad overhaul,” according to the Associated Press. “They said he fully intends to act before the end of the year.”
Sessions succeeded in forcing a vote that put Senate Democrats on the record in support of Obama’s proposal earlier this summer.
“Only Senator Joe Manchin joined with Republicans to try and prohibit the president’s issuance of work permits to 5-6 million,” his office noted on July 31. “Even the Senate Democrats who claimed to oppose the executive actions (Pryor, Hagan, Begich and Landrieu), voted with Reid, Durbin and Schumer to block Sessions’ motion and thereby support the president’s action.”
North Carolina state-house speaker Thom Tillis, the Republican Senate nominee, faulted his Democratic incumbent opponent, Senator Kay Hagan, for refusing to vote against Obama’s executive action.
“President Obama’s decision to delay executive amnesty for illegal immigrants until after Election Day doesn’t change the fact that Kay Hagan supports amnesty and has repeatedly voted against securing the border,” Tillis said Saturday. “When Senator Hagan had the opportunity to cross party lines and stop executive amnesty, she sided with President Obama instead of the people of North Carolina, yet another example of her saying one thing on the campaign trail but doing another in Washington.”