At least they should support any effort in the lame duck session of Congress coming up a week after the election to defund the program until certain problems have been resolved—primarily the weak screening process—and to pause the program as a new administration comes into office in the new year.
Don’t forget, the Obama Administration is working quickly right now tofront end the huge flow of refugees Obama wants for FY17.
Here is what I said in September and it still applies (with updates!):
In my previous post I told you that it is not too late to tell key members of Congress to protect your towns by cutting funding in the Final Budget for FY2017 for refugee admissions for 2017 from terror-producing regions of the world and elsewhere which must be passed before Congress recesses for Christmas.
This is the House calendar as it stands right now. Check out how little they actually work! They will be back on the 14th of November and the 2017 Budget must be done by December 9th. And, btw, the 2017 fiscal year began on October 1st, so they are already way behind (as usual)!
Those crossed off signed on to the earlier Babin/Brat letter but be sure to contact them again to urge them to join a new effort in November.
Again, those crossed off below have already taken a brave position, but focus your calls on all Freedom Caucus members. Tell them to check in with Rep. Brian Babin’s (R-TX) office to see what the plan is for the lame duck.
Only 13 days left before the election to get a commitment from them!
Jim Jordan of Ohio, Chair Justin Amash of Michigan Brian Babin of Texas Rod Blum of Iowa Dave Brat of Virginia Jim Bridenstine of Oklahoma Mo Brooks of Alabama Ken Buck of Colorado Curt Clawson of Florida Warren Davidson of Ohio Ron DeSantis of Florida Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee Jeff Duncan of South Carolina John Fleming of Louisiana Trent Franks of Arizona Scott Garrett of New Jersey Louie Gohmert of Texas Paul Gosar of Arizona Morgan Griffith of Virginia Andy Harris of Maryland Jody Hice of Georgia Walter Jones of North Carolina Steve King of Iowa Raúl Labrador of Idaho Barry Loudermilk of Georgia Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming Mark Meadows of North Carolina Alex Mooney of West Virginia Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina Gary Palmer of Alabama Steve Pearce of New Mexico Scott Perry of Pennsylvania Ted Poe of Texas Bill Posey of Florida Keith Rothfus of Pennsylvania Matt Salmon of Arizona Mark Sanford of South Carolina David Schweikert of Arizona Marlin Stutzman of Indiana Randy Weber of Texas Ted Yoho of Florida
Don’t know who your Congressman is, click hereand put in your zipcode.
This is the third in a series of posts on DEFUNDING the Refugee Admissions Program in the FY2017 Budget. See Texas, here and Idaho,here. All posts on this topic are tagged ‘where is Congress.’
This is the first in a series of posts I will be writing in the coming weeks haranguing readers and all those concerned with the rapidly expanding UN/US State Department Refugee Admissions Program (RAP).
Although it is wonderful to see and hear about all the great things you are doing to educate the public and pressure your local and state officials about problems you see with the RAP, but frankly there is only one place (besides electing Donald Trump) where you should be putting most of your energy over the coming weeks.
Keep it simple! DEFUND the Refugee program!
Use all of your local action to pressure your Member of Congress and US Senators to DEFUND the RAP on the final budget vote which must happen by December 9th.
At right is the House of Representatives calendar for the remainder of the year (subject to change, as they say, post election). There is little time!
The Obama Administration has said they want 110,000 refugees (20,000-30,000 will be Syrian Muslims) admitted to the US by September 30, 2017. If the Dept. of State (DOS) and the ORR (in Health and Human Services) do not have the money for that many, they will not be able to bring in that vast number. It is that simple.
The present Continuing Resolution has the program funded at the 2016 level (which is not enough money for 110,000 either).
Go Texas!
Already the state has shown that the will of the people is to not bring in more refugees (based on Governor Abbott’s strong stanceon the program). However, the DOS and the federal resettlement contractors there are thumbing their noses at the governor and have made Texas once again the top resettlement state in the nation this fiscal year already, see here. Make no mistake! This is about turning the red state blue! Tell your member of Congress to follow Texas Rep. Brian Babin’s lead to defund the Refugee Admissions Program.
A few weeks ago, relentless and brave Rep. Brian Babin made an attempt to cut the funding for the RAP on the Continuing Resolution with this letter and with a visit to the House Rules Committee seeking a rider for that CR. Rules did not grant him his request.
However, we expect to see another effort by Dr. Babin on the looming FY2017 Budget right after the election.
We are told that he is committed to seeking out every opportunity to defund the refugee program, including in any must-pass budget legislation, and will be looking for other Members of Congress to join him in this effort. All of you must go to your Congressman right now in the weeks before the election and pressure them to support any effort by Congressman Babin to rein-in the program.
However, in our first in a series of posts, it is members of the powerful Texas delegation that are critical to this effort. Before I get to the Texas targets….
I can’t emphasize enough that by controlling the flow of money for costly resettlement, it consequently reduces the number to be resettled. At present the Administration is working overtime to get as many refugees resettled before Inauguration Day in January. If Hillary wins they will have a jump on possibly an even greater flow (she will use emergency powers) for the remainder of the year (assuming they get $$$ out of Congress). If Donald Trump wins it will likely take a few months to slow the flow because he will have to get his people placed, especially in the State Department where Anne Richard would have to be gone ASAP. I anticipate there will be much screaming and crying that there are thousands of refugees in the pipeline and it would be heartless to stop the flow especially if Congress has granted them a huge budget for FY2017. So, it all comes back to Congress and funding!The House of Representatives is most important, but you must reach your Senators too!
Although they might like to stay in the shadows, here are the key members of the House that Texas patriots must target in coming weeks! These are some of the most important REPUBLICAN members with the power to rein-in the program! House Appropriations Committee members from Texas:
Kay Granger
John Culbertson
John Carter
House Judiciary Committee members (some of these are already friendly to our concerns) from Texas (Judiciary Committee has oversight responsibility for the RAP):
Lamar Smith
Louie Gohmert
Ted Poe
Blake Farenthold
John Ratcliffe
House Rules Committee members from Texas:
Pete Sessions (Chairman!)
Michael Burgess
House Homeland Security Committee members from Texas (because more than perhaps others, these members understand the security risks):
Michael McCaul (Chairman!)
Lamar Smith
Will Hurd
John Ratcliffe
Do you see how important Texas members of Congress are? Those are the members above and also Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn who have the real power to slow the flow of refugees to Texas and to America!
Call on Cruz and Cornyn to follow Rep. Brian Babin’s initiative to defund the program on the Senate side.
See all of those above on the campaign trail and make sure they get the message from you before they return to Washington on November 14th! If you don’t live in Texas, keep pressure on your member (and on Speaker Paul Ryan!) to back Rep. Babin. In the coming days and weeks we will have more targets in other states. Stay tuned!
For more posts about Congress budgetary role, go to our tag ‘Where is Congress’
So, time is of the essence to call your member of Congress and tell him/her to follow the appeal laid out in the Babin/Brat letter. Tell your member to call the leadership and urge them to cut the funds for refugees from terror producing parts of the world. Majority leader McCarthy and Speaker Ryan have the power to save your town from becoming the next St. Cloud, MN, but will they lift a finger! https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2016/09/19/st-cloud-somali-jihadist-one-of-nearly-150000-somalis-admitted-to-us-in-refugee-program-in-over-3-decades/ The key leadership in the House who should be hearing from their fellow Republicans (and from you) are:
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy
Rep. Hal Rogers (Chairman of the Appropriations Committee)
Again, your member should call those three and tell them to cut the funding for refugees coming from terror-producing regions of the world (I would tell them to halt the whole program to be reviewed when a new Administration arrives in Washington).
The timing could not be better in light of the Somali terror attack in St. Cloud yesterday and it is looking like an Afghan, legally admitted to the US, might have been responsible for the attack in New York and the failed attack in NJ over the weekend.
We promised to give you the full list of those who bravely signed on to the Babin/Brat letter, they should be commended and urged to hang tough. (All Republicans in Congress were presumably given an opportunity to sign this letter last week and unless listed below, they obviously failed to do so.)
(Prime targets for your appeal should be to the House Freedom Caucus. Everyone of them should have signed the Babin/Brat letter. Those who did sign are listed below.) ***Update*** I’ve compared the lists for you, go here to see House Freedom Caucus members who haven’t supported Babin/Brat.
They are listening to you on Capitol Hill as we see in this letter to the House leadership from dozens of House members. Here is the press release (below) on the Babin/Brat letter to Speaker Paul Ryan. This is from Thursday and I haven’t seen much about it yet, but this is BIG news! (this post will be updated as soon as we get more information!)
No fear! Rep. Brian Babin of Texas has been demanding reform of the US Refugee Admissions Program since he first set foot in the halls of Congress.
Remember Obama can’t get his final wish (110,000 refugees beginning two weeks from today) to change America by changing its people without MONEY that Congress appropriates! Forget Obama, whether we continue on the road Europe is on, or not, is up to the Republican Congress!
Here is one brave and important move some Republicans are making:
Washington, DC – U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) was joined by 37 of his colleagues today in sending a letter to Speaker Ryan, Majority Leader McCarthy and Appropriations Chairman Rogers asking that provisions be included in the upcoming Continuing Resolution legislation that would put in place a moratorium on refugees coming from terrorist hotbeds in Syria, the Middle East, and North Africa until appropriate screening procedures are put in place and Congress is given a full accounting of the costs of this program.
“There is no duty of the federal government more important than ensuring the protection of the American people,” the letter states. “We believe it is prudent and in the best interest of the American people that language be included in the upcoming FY 2017 Continuing Resolution to restore Congressional oversight and authority over the refugee program. We cannot allow the refugee program to serve as a Trojan Horse threat to American national security. Our sworn duty is first and foremost to the safety and security of the American people.”
Speaker Ryan, Majority Leader McCarthy and Chairman Rogers,
We are writing to express our concerns about the continuing threat of terrorism and to urge that the Congress exercise greater oversight and authority over the refugee resettlement programs as we consider the FY2017 Continuing Resolution legislation.
In the aftermath of the attacks by radical Islamist jihadists in Paris, San Bernardino, Brussels, Nice, Germany, Istanbul and Orlando, the American people have become increasingly wary of the massive refugee influx from terrorist hot spots, the inability to conduct proper security screening of these individuals and the serious national security concerns this raises for the American people.
Furthermore, the President’s rush to meet an arbitrary number of 10,000 Syrian refugee admissions in FY 2016, in spite of security concerns raised by top Administration national security officials, indicates that national security concerns are being set aside in order to meet arbitrary policy goals.
The Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secretary of Homeland Security have each stated that they cannot properly screen refugees coming from Syria and the surrounding regions for possible threats to our national security.
There is no duty of the federal government more important than ensuring the protection of the American people. We believe that we would fall short of that duty if the Congress fails to exercise greater authority over the Administration’s refugee resettlement program. We see this as an important national security concern and ask that this concern be addressed in the upcoming negotiations over funding in the FY 2017 Continuing Resolution.
We believe it is prudent and in the best interest of the American people that language be included in the upcoming FY 2017 Continuing Resolution to restore Congressional oversight and authority over the refugee program. Specifically we would ask that you consider putting language in the continuing resolution that would:
1. Prevent federal funds from being used to admit to the United States refugees from Syria, the Middle East and North Africa until the following conditions are met:
a. Federal Immigration, law enforcement and national security agencies put in place processes to ensure that refugee and related programs are not able to be co-opted by would be terrorists;
b. That such process and programs are provided to the Congress in both classified and public formats;
c. That a longer-term monitoring process be put into place for those admitted to the U.S. as refugees; and
d. That no federal funds may be used for refugee travel to the U.S. or any U.S. resettlement of refugees from this troubled region until Congress has passed by joint resolution a bill that specifically approves funding for such purposes.
2. Permit U.S. funds to continue to be used to provide for the safety of refugees overseas, including housing, food and medical aid.
ISIS has repeatedly declared that they would infiltrate the refugee community that is leaving the Middle East and flooding into Europe. The attacks across Europe over the past year appear to be a fulfillment of that threat. We cannot allow the refugee program to serve as a Trojan Horse threat to American national security. Our sworn duty is first and foremost to the safety and security of the American people.
We look forward to working with you to make this a priority in the Continuing Resolution.
Many of the signatures are illegible, we will be working on getting you the full list, so you know who to thank and who to still go after. At minimum all members of the Freedom Caucusshould sign on as well as Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the Subcommittee responsible for the Refugee Admissions Program. Go to the letter and see the signatures, here are the ones we can read for sure! If yours is among them, please take time to thank him or her!
Lou Barletta
Jim Bridenstine
Tim Huelskamp
Diane Black
Mo Brooks
Louie Gohmert
Joe Wilson
Walter Jones
Sam Johnson
Matt Salmon
Jeff Miller
Ted Yoho
Jeff Duncan
For new readers, see my tag ‘Where is Congress’ to catch up on all the recent news on the budget/appropriations battle on-going on Capitol Hill. The federal resettlement contractors are out in force attempting to get their funding increased by millions of dollars.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!
Do they think we are that stupid! http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/freedom-caucus-koch-club-growth-214973
Before you read on, see myprevious postabout how these Continuing Budget Resolutions have perverted Constitutional government. The Republicans have been complicit in this travesty.
News earlier this week indicated that the House ‘Freedom Caucus’ is thinking about pushing the leadership for the add-on of a bill to the ‘continuing budget resolution’ (CR) to supposedly pause the flow of Syrians to the US!
(Their plans may already have changed, since this Politicostory is a couple of days old).
It failed last year because Speaker Ryan knew it wouldn’t pass the Senate. Here is the gist of it:
The House Freedom Caucus is targeting must-pass spending legislation as a potential bargaining chip to halt the Obama administration’s Syrian refugee resettlement program — a move sure to complicate GOP leaders’ hopes of heading off any government shut-down talk by quickly passing a stop-gap measure.
[….]
The Freedom Caucus, meanwhile, stopped short of adopting a formal strategy on the so-called continuing resolution. Many expected the caucus to vote on Tuesday to oppose a short-term stopgap spending measure that runs out in December. Several of their conservative allies off the Hill have asked leadership to punt any major budget decisions into spring of 2017.
But rather than flat-out opposing the short-term CR, the group of conservative lawmakers instead hashed out a preliminary plan to play hardball during its weekly meeting at Hunan Dynasty on Capitol Hill Tuesday evening.
They’re planning to tell leadership they will back a short-term funding package if they can tuck in a bill by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) to stop the resettlement program until the administration “can assure no terrorists or individuals with radical sympathies or views will be admitted,” according to a summary of the bill.
So, what do they think Obama will say? He will assure them in a nanosecond!
Politico continued:
While not an outright refusal to support a short-term CR, their demands could still spark a major legislative battle that gums up appropriations: While the refugees matter passed the House early this year, it died in the Senate, which needs Democratic votes to send anything to the president’s desk. Obama, likewise, is almost certain to reject a spending bill that includes such a provision.
“There was some discussion about doing a shorter-term CR if we had a commitment from leadership to attach and keep attached a pause on Syrian Refugees coming in until we have a better vetting system to identity the terrorists,” said one Freedom Caucus member who asked not to be identified. “We haven’t taken a formal position, but there was a lot of discussion about that and many of the members felt that was a reasonable request.”
They know you are angry as hell! This is really just a sop to you.
All they really need to do is CUT THE FUNDING ACROSS THE BOARD FOR THE PROGRAM TO WHATEVER LEVEL THEY HAVE THE GUTS TO FIGHT FOR! (Remember there are other concerns with the refugee program besides the Syrian flood, Somalis have proven to be a problematic group as well!).
Now, for a good laugh!
A meaningless show vote!
See what World Net Dailyreported LAST year about this same failed strategy:
House Speaker Paul Ryan is lining up a showdown vote for Thursday on President Obama’s plan to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States.
Throwing a bone! Speaker Ryan knew that the Syrian ‘pause’ would go no where in the Senate
But conservatives on Capitol Hill who want to see the refugee program halted are warning that Ryan’s plan is nothing but a smokescreen designed to give lip-service while refusing to defund the program.
Ryan likely has no intention of cutting off the flow of Muslim refugees into the U.S., nor does he plan to ensure Syria’s persecuted Christian minority gets rescued from the clutches of ISIS, sources told WND.
But WND has learned from insiders on Capitol Hill that Ryan’s end objective is not to close down a program that has delivered more than 1.5 million Muslim refugees to American cities and towns since 1990 under a law authored in 1980 by then-Sen. Joe Biden and the late Teddy Kennedy.
A conservative Capitol Hill aide told WND, “Paul Ryan is setting us up for a meaningless show vote on Syrian refugees so the White House can continue the influx of Muslim refugees this year and all the years to follow as it always has.
“Putting Ryan in charge of a fight to block refugees would be like putting (Nancy) Pelosi in charge of fight to repeal Obamacare,” the staffer said. “No one loves mass immigration more than Ryan, so how exactly is he going to make a public argument against it? He can’t and won’t, leaving Democrats unharmed, unscathed and unafraid.”
Members of the House Intelligence, Armed Services and Homeland Security panels will meet this week to come up with legislation the House will vote on by Thursday.
The “show vote” will likely occur on North Carolina Rep. Richard Hudson’s American SAFE Act of 2105, the source said, a toothless bill that would allow Obama to continue the transfer of Middle Eastern refugees to the U.S. with certain assurances that they are being “certified” as having no connections to terrorism.
Babin bill has more teeth
A much stronger bill, the Resettlement Accountability National Security Act introduced by Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, is not being moved to a vote by Ryan. The Texas congressman’s bill would halt all resettlements until a full accounting of the program’s cost and risks to national security can be fully assessed.
And, of course Ryan still won’t move it this year! Defund refugee resettlement!
I want to impress upon you how important this funding issue is. The Refugee Industry understands it very well or else they wouldn’t be planning their big push on Congress during this next week and into the week of the 19th when Obama goes to the United Nations to guilt-trip America into ‘welcoming’ hundreds of thousands of impoverished people to America. You must push back and do it now!
If you are reading RRW for the first time, see our tag ‘Where is Congress’ and read about what you need to be doing!
By the way if the CR is short term (until December), you might have a great opportunity in October when they are all home trying to get elected to really hammer them on defunding refugee resettlement. But, you can’t count on that, so you must hit them before Obama goes to the United Nations! Better still, hit them this next week before the refugee industry does its postcard drop on the 15th.
The Freedom Caucus members are listed here. Does one of these members represent you?
