Speaker Boehner: Immigration Reform Needed Now

Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio says it is “time to do immigration reform”. Talking with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, he said that border security needs to be addressed before comprehensive immigration reform is possible. “We had a flood of children coming across the border once again proving that no good immigration bill can pass until we have real border security”, the Speaker said.

According to the Speaker, he would work with President Barack Obama on immigration reform. He also noted, “big things in Washington take bipartisan majorities,” and that the only good way to fix our immigration problems are “in a bipartisan way.” When Stephanopoulos asked if the Republican Party would follow Speaker Boehner in passing the reforms, the Speaker simply answered, “Absolutely.”

Roll Call: Boehner ‘Absolutely’ Confident GOP Would Back Immigration Overhaul

ABC News: “This Week” Transcript: House Speaker John Boehner

Will Independents Deliver Senate Victories?

According to a study from the think tank Third Way, this election will have many more independents than ever before, National Journal  is reporting. The study analyzed current voter registration data in ten states that are expected to have close Senate or gubernatorial elections this year.  According to their findings, independents across the board are registering to vote at an incredible rate and will be critical in choosing which party has control of the Senate in January.

Since 2008, there has been a 17 percent increase in independent registration, totaling 1.3 million voters among the ten states. Meanwhile, Republican registration has grown by about three percent while Democratic registration has fallen by five percent. The author of the study, Michelle Diggles, said the voters are “unhappy with Congress, they’re unhappy with the president, and as a result they’re checking ‘none of the above.’”

In Colorado, independent registration has grown by 40 percent, making the roughly one million independents in the state a larger group than either Republicans or Democrats. As the largest group of voters, their votes will be critical in deciding whether the Republican candidate, Representative Cory Gardner, will be able to unseat the Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Udall.

While independent voters last election leaned slightly Republican, with President Obama only securing 45 percent of their support, it is hard to predict how the independent vote will be cast in November. Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, a Republican who faces a tough reelection battle this year, won sixty percent of the vote in his easy 2008 election while securing only 50 percent of the independent vote. This year a popular independent candidate, Greg Orman, is running, suggesting that Senator Roberts will struggle to retain the same independent support as before.

The states included in the study were Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. As every state included showed a rise in independent voter registration, independents will likely have a major impact in November’s elections.

National Journal: Independent Voters Could Decide Senate Control

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