In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) condemned the omnibus funding bill recently introduced in Congress, dubbing it an abuse of executive power that serves to enact President Obama’s agenda.
"As I feared, the ultimate effect that I expressed and have been concerned about for some months now is that this bill will fund the president’s entire lawless immigration agenda," Sessions said.
"For years, the American people have suffered under the lawless, dangerous, wage-reducing immigration policies of this administration," he said. "They sent us here, the people did, to protect their interest."
Sessions condemned the bill for advancing items on Obama’s agenda, the first of which would be allowing the president to let any number of refugees into America.
"Without conditions, it approves the president’s request for increased refugee admissions, allowing him to bring in as many refugees as he wants under current law," Sessions said. "He simply has to notify Congress of how many he intends to allow to enter."
The bill, he said, "will ensure at least 170,000 green cards […] will be issued to migrants from Muslim countries just over the next 12 months." A green card applicant is given permanent residency "with a guaranteed path to citizenship."
Sessions also said that the bill would fund sanctuary cities, a term used for American cities that give shelter to illegal aliens.
"Because of this bill, sanctuary cities will continue to get federal funds," he said. "Why should we be funding, providing federal law enforcement monies to cities that won’t even cooperate with the federal government?"
The omnibus bill also quadruples the number of foreign workers accepted as part of the controversial H-2B foreign worker visa program, "increasing by fourfold the number of low-skilled, low-wage workers allowed to enter their country from 66,000 to 254,000," he said.
"It’s been added to this bill without hearing and open process in the Senate," Sessions said, and pointed out that these workers would not occupy agricultural jobs, but blue-collar jobs that Americans are doing.
"These foreign workers are brought in exclusively to fill blue-collar, low-wage, non-farm jobs […] in hotels, in restaurants, on construction sites, amusement parks," he said.
Foreign workers are also "allowed to bring their spouses and children with them," and the tax bill that moved alongside the omnibus bill would grant them tax credits, Sessions said.
However, illegal aliens "don’t pay taxes because their income is low." Giving them tax credits, he said, would be equivalent to giving them "a check from the government."
"The tax bill […] makes permanent the Additional Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it does nothing to block their future distribution of monies to illegal aliens," he said. "A tax credit to a person who doesn’t pay taxes is a check from the government."
"It’s not a tax deduction, it’s a direct payment," he said.
Sessions said that he proposed language that would "prevent illegal aliens from receiving tax credits," but that it was rejected "because President Obama didn’t want it."
He said that the bill does not represent the interests of the American public and instead advances the agenda of the Obama administration and allied elites.
"This bill explains why Republican and Democratic voters are in open rebellion," he said. "They elect people that they believe are going to take action to protect their security, their jobs, their wages, and what do they get?"
He called on his fellow congressmen to protect the interests of the American people against the Obama administration’s lawless overreach.
"They did not send us here to bow down to the president’s lawless immigration policies, nor to line the pockets of special interests and big business," he said. "Who do we represent?"