Yellowhammer has already written several times about how powerful and influential Alabama’s U.S. Senate delegation will be if Republicans re-take the Senate in November, but that doesn’t mean they’re not already moving the needle on issues now.
Sen. Richard Shelby has long been considered a power player in the U.S. Senate, no matter which party is in power. And now this week, Sen. Jeff Sessions is being singled out by The Hill as one of the most “influential voices shaping the immigration debate,” which continues to be one of the hottest issues in Washington.
Here’s what The Hill, an influential inside-the-beltway publication, had to say about Alabama’s junior senator:
Sessions, the ranking member of the Budget Committee and among Capitol Hill’s staunchest critics of immigration reform legislation, has emerged this summer as something else: a powerful influence over the debate. Indeed, when House GOP leaders were forced to pull their initial border-funding bill last month, several singled out meetings with Sessions as the reason they were bucking their leadership.
Sessions hasn’t let up since. In press releases, op-eds and cable news interviews, the Alabama conservative has hammered Obama’s response to the border migrant crisis and warned that new executive action would open the country to an increased threat of terrorism. The effect has been to rally the conservative base against Obama’s unilateral action, even before he’s taken any.
As a result of a Sessions’ efforts, The Hill noted that “even the most ardent immigrant rights advocates are saying it: Reform legislation is dead this year — and for the foreseeable future.”
But that hasn’t stopped President Obama from threatening to bypass congress to grant what Sessions has frequently referred to as “executive amnesty” to millions of illegal immigrants.
“My message to the American people today is this: you can stop this. We can stop this. We will not let this stand,” Sessions declared recently on the Senate floor. “The Senate cannot be allowed to surrender to the President’s lawlessness.”
(h/t al.com)
Check out more of Yellowhammer’s coverage of Sessions’ immigration stand:
1. While the rest of the Senate is on vacation, Sessions continues fight against executive amnesty
2. Sessions: Obama’s executive amnesty could lead to terrorist attack on homeland
3. Sessions unloads: Obama more concerned with helping illegals than getting Americans back to work
4. Sessions: Lawsuit against Obama should include his defiance of immigration law
5. Rush Limbaugh: ‘God bless Jeff Sessions’
Follow Cliff on Twitter @Cliff_Sims
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