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The Speaker’s
Meeting with President Obama & Congressional Leaders
At the White House this morning, Speaker Boehner met with President
Obama, Vice President Biden, and the bicameral, bipartisan leadership
of the House and Senate to discuss topics including the economy,
immigration, Authorization for Use of Military Force, and cybersecurity.
The Speaker opened his remarks highlighting the new Congress’s action
on jobs and the economy. He spoke about the House-passed bill to
approve the Keystone XL pipeline currently advancing through the
Senate, and urged the president to sign it when it reaches his
desk. He also discussed other opportunities to work together to
help build a stronger economy by expanding trade and fixing the broken
tax code.
The Speaker made clear that the House would push forward in
consideration of the Appropriations Committee’s 2015 Department of
Homeland Security appropriations bill, which takes a number of steps to
bolster border security and law enforcement efforts. The bill
will include amendments to stop the president’s unilateral actions on
immigration, and the speaker reminded the president that he himself had
stated publicly many times in the past that he did not have the power
to rewrite immigration law through executive action.
The leaders also discussed how stopping cyber-attacks is critical to
keeping our homeland safe and protecting American jobs. The
Speaker said the House has passed a number of measures to help stop
cyber-attacks by arming private-sector companies with government
intelligence on cyber threats, while protecting the American people’s
privacy. Unfortunately, some of those measures never went
anywhere in the Democratic-controlled Senate. The Speaker said
Republicans are ready to work with both parties to address this
important issue and put some common-sense measures on the president’s
desk.
Finally, the Speaker again encouraged the President to draft and send
up to the Hill a new Authorization for Use of Military Force to defeat
and destroy ISIL, noting that historically the Commander-in-Chief has
identified the need for use of military force, written the AUMF, sent
it to Capitol Hill, and worked to build a bipartisan coalition to
secure its passage. The Speaker said that if the President takes
these steps, Republicans will work with him to build bipartisan support
for its enactment.
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