On the recordJune 18, 2014
Madam President, I rise today to talk about the House's tragic and disconcerting failure to do anything to fix our broken immigration system, even though an entire year has passed since the Senate passed bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform with 68 votes--an impressive bipartisan vote total in this increasingly partisan climate. The House Republicans' lack of action on immigration is almost completely inexplicable if you compare the most recent Republican Party platform to what the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had to say about the Senate immigration reform bill. When you take the time to look at both of these documents, you realize that no other bill that we could pass during this or any other Congress would accomplish as many of the Republican Party's stated legislative objectives as passing immigration reform. Just so that everyone understands this, I want to take you through a step-by-step process where we look at the Republican Party platform and compare it to the CBO report. The first substantive sentence of the Republican Party platform says: The best jobs program is economic growth. Republicans will pursue free market policies that are the surest way to boost employment and create job growth and economic prosperity for all. Well, what does the CBO report have to say about what the immigration bill does for economic growth, job growth, and economic prosperity? Page 3 of the CBO report says that ``the bill would increase real . . .…





