February 2004 – House Republicans storm out over gay marriage amendment – “the most important thing facing the legislature,” according to Republican leader, Brian Bosma.
March 2 – 3, 2005 – House Democrats decline to take the floor, “car bombing” the Governor’s “reforms.” At issue were statewide Daylight Saving, an Inspector General, and a picture, government ID requirement for in-person voting.
2006 – 2007 are like the years without Christmas, I don’t recall any walkouts.
2008 – Democrats get shafty, Republicans get mad.
Republicans have walked off the floor of the Indiana House in protest of a move by majority Democrats to prevent any GOP amendments to legislation aimed at penalizing companies that hire illegal immigrants.
Republicans said the legislation was too weak and they wanted to make changes to it. But to prevent votes on any changes, Democrats took language in the bill and filed it as an amendment to another bill.
They did that four minutes before a deadline to file amendments on bills up for consideration Thursday. Republicans said the bill Democrats were trying to use as a new home for the immigration language had nothing to do with immigration.
It’s kind of odd, though – as of right now, the legislature’s page doesn’t show any filed House amendments for SB 335. So it’s unclear what, if any, amendments to the bill were being proposed by the House Republicans.
Oh, wait, I get it. The House Republicans filed a minority committee report. I’m not sure what the tactical advantages are for a minority committee report as opposed to just trying to amend the bill on Second Reading. The procedure pretty much never works and is either ignored or becomes the source of controversy.
In this case, the House Republicans wanted to go well beyond anything in Sen. Delph’s original proposal. Rather than focusing on employers who hire illegals, the House Republicans wanted to cut off schools and medical services for immigrants and their children as well as impose duties on local law enforcement and other government agencies to verify citizenship or residency status of the individuals the come into contact with.
More from the Indy Channel.
Update Niki Kelly has more on the brouhaha in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Since the House Republicans pulled their stunt with the minority committee report, the House Democrats contrived to take the text of Sen. Delph’s bill, as it passed out of the House Committee, and amend it into SB 345 having to do with unemployment contributions. The House Republicans complained that the new home had nothing to do with immigration, but they miss the point. Both have to do with employee-employer relations. The House Republicans probably didn’t like that sort of frame since they had the intent of expanding the Senate Bill beyond the employment context. And, incidentally, the legislator who offered the minority report was Rep. Eric Turner, the legislator who proposed to amend the gay marriage proposal into the tax cap proposal.
Rep. Trent Van Haaften, D-Mount Vernon, who chaired the committee that heard the original bill, pointed out that Turner had the opportunity to offer the changes he wanted during the committee process and didn’t.
this all seems like very complex maneuvers to the public, but it’s very simple. Immigrants are the new gays, i.e. the wedge issue the Republicans will use in the 2008 election to try and win the Southern IN Dem seats that are being vacated. They think if they can slam immigrants hard in this bill, they’ll get enough moderate and even conservative Dems to vote R.
The House Chair is right. (BTW, Van Haften is a southern Dem.) The Repugs could have offered these amendments in the committee, but then they would have had to discuss them in an open forum. They would have had to justify what no other state is getting away with either. Denying medical services and education to the children of aliens is not going to fly in the media. Not to mention, that just because the parents are illegal, it doesn’t mean the children are, if they were born here. Huckabee and McCain are getting guff for the same position that these House R’s are rejecting.
ARGH.. do they never tire of pulling such stupid a** ploys?
I know that not all Republicans are bad, but the House Republicans seem to be the worst. Even Republican Senator Delph was quoted in the Star as saying to the House Repubs to knock off the non sense.
Sounds to me like Sen. Delph wants the legislation. The House Republicans want the issue.
I agree with Senator Delph.This bill is better than no bill and should be passed as is.Much tougher laws have been passed in several states and federal judges have recently upheld much tougher laws than bill 335 in Arizona,Missouri,and Oklahoma.I believe this bill if presnted to the full House for a vote will pass.In my opinion the residents in this state will approve of this type of legislation overwhelmingly and I would love to see a poll done on it.
Would have love it if someone asked McCain about SB335 or the similar bill in his home state of Arizona.