The House Rules Committee completed the rule for full House consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015 and ruled Rep. Jeff Denham's (R-Calif.) ENLIST Act amendment out of order, signaling a victory for anti-amnesty activists. Denham's amendment would have granted amnesty to illegal aliens who came to the country under a certain age and signed up to serve in the military. The committee also blocked two other amendments that would have granted special privileges to illegal aliens.
The fight started over a month ago when we first caught wind of a secret plan in the House, with the assistance of Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), to include Denham's ENLIST Act in the original text of the NDAA. But under immense pressure from grassroots activists and Members of the House Armed Services Committee who opposed the amendment, its chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), kept it out of the original bill.
Denham then pushed to have it offered as an amendment during the Armed Service Committee's markup of the bill, but again McKeon responded to grassroots pressure and made sure the amendment wasn't offered.
After the Armed Services Committee passed the NDAA without the amnesty provision, Denham pushed to offer his bill as an amendment on the House floor. But again, pressure from the grassroots on both Rules Committee Members and House Leadership forced the Committee Chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) to rule the amendment out of order. The committee also ruled an amendment from Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) that would have allowed recipients of Pres. Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to enlist in the military out of order, as well as an amendment from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) that would have allowed illegal aliens to enroll in the military academies.
While the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act will be amnesty-free, the Senate is still considering whether or not it should add Denham's bill to their version of the NDAA. Further, House Speaker John Boehner and Cantor have made clear that they support Denham's bill, and Boehner promised on Tuesday to have a floor vote on the legislation.
Boehner said the Defense bill is the wrong spot for the vote, calling it "inappropriate," but he didn't rule out a vote on stand-alone administration.
"There have been discussions about that, but no decisions," he said.Denham, who introduced the same proposal during last year's Defense authorization debate but yanked it in deference to colleagues, said he would "prefer" to see the issue taken up solo.
"That's not a discussion we have had yet but it certainly would be a willing compromise," he told reporters after the event. "I want a date certain of when a stand-alone bill would be" brought to the floor.
For more information, see The Hill.
