But if you were a member of congress, you were supposed to go to work today, then also tomorrow, which is a bummer, but dont worry, you can cut out middle of the day on wednesday. You will not be working thursday or friday. You will not be working all of next week. Also, you do not have to work the monday after that. Youre going to work a 2 1 2day week this week, then youre not back until after veterans day. When you come back after veterans day, its a fourday week followed by another fourday week, and then thats it for the whole month nice deal, right . I mean, no matter what else might motivate you to want to be in congress, that kind of a schedule and a sixfigure salary for doing it, that is a combination that is impossible not to love. And we learned at politico. Com late last night this is amazing that even though congress is already basically not working anymore between now and christmas, theyve got just those few days scheduled on the calendar, internally, Speaker John Boehner and Senior Republicans are wondering if they will cancel some of the remaining days in session. Theyre only planning on working a total of 19 days between now and the end of the year, but they are thinking they might need some more days off on top of that, and that is in part because they do not even know what to do with the days that they are working now. House Republican Leaders are struggling to come up with an agenda to fill the 19 legislative days that are left in 2013. I mean, they have been naming courthouses and stuff, and thats all well and good, but apparently, there are no big plans. Theyre not working on anything else between now and the end of the year. They plan to not do anything. The next big idea they are floating at politico. Com today is, i dont know, maybe more vacation . Thats their big plan. How about jibber jibber. I have a great job . That is a job. In the midst of this whirlwind of activity, republican members of congress who are working that schedule have started to insist to the press that because of that schedule that theyre working in washington right now, they really are way too busy to add anything substantive to their legislative schedule. Congressman tom cole, whos in the Republican Leadership, got asked whether or not the house was ever going to get around to taking a vote on immigration, since immigration was the one policy issue the Republican Party formally recommended to its elected official members that they do something about after the mitt romney president ial loss last year. So, congressman tom cole was asked by Russell Berman of the hill newspaper in d. C. If there might possibly be time to give immigration a vote in the house between now and the end of the year, since it already passed the senate and, frankly, the house doesnt seem all that busy. Here was his response. But, you know, immigration is a divisive and difficult issue itself. The idea that congress can look, we havent were not sure we can chew gum, let alone walk and chew gum, so lets just chew gum for a while. We dont know, we can walk and chew gum, let alone walk you know, can we just chew gum for a while . Congressman Raul Labrador of idaho had been very involved in the discussions about immigration on the republican side. He now tells the associated pres press, i dont think there is going to be sufficient time for us to discuss immigration. Congressman mario diazbalart, also a leading voice for republicans on this issue, tells congressional quarterly, our problem now is time. If i knew that we had a lot more time, then my assessment would be really rosy. But alas, theres so much to do, so many days to not work at all because theres nothing on the schedule in congress. Its amazing. On the senate side, the most visible republican in favor of Immigration Reform, of course, has been florida senator marco rubio. Today, as advocates for Immigration Reform and the white house and democrats continue to ramp up their agitation for a lastminute, 11thhour push to finally get something passed on immigration, marco rubio today bravely stepped up to the plate and sent his spokesperson out to announce that the senator no longer supports his own proposal on immigration. Courage. Senator rubio wrote a comprehensive immigration bill. He went on conservative talk radio and talked people into it and defended the whole idea of it. He pushed his bill in the senate. He was 1 of 14 republican senators who voted for the comprehensive immigration bill that finally passed there. But now that its clear that House Republicans are just going to let it die, marco rubio jumped and is disavowing his own legislation, disavowing his own idea. Hes against it now, his own thing. And thats actually turning out to be kind of a grand old tradition in the grand old party. Its a weird feature of our politics now that republicans in elected office turn against their own policy ideas, ideas that they came up with themselves, that they championed, legislation that they sponsored, stuff they voted for in the past. These things suddenly fall out of favor and become unsupportable, even though these guys once stood for these ideas themselves. I do not know what signal it is that they get, you know. How do they know when its time to change the channel . Oh, im against this now . Are you sure . When do i sometimes it happens so suddenly, it is just like somebody grabbed the Remote Control and started clicking. Lets start, first of all, with mandates. Youre probably picking up 1,000, some estimates 1,800 on your premiums for people that dont have Health Insurance because of the expensive use of Emergency Rooms as an example. There isnt anything wrong with it except some people look at it as an infringement upon individual freedom, but when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principle then out to lie the same way for Health Insurance. I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates. That was iowa senator Chuck Grassley in the summer of 2009 making the case on fox news for an individual mandate in health reform. Then came, you know, later that same year, when senator grassley, who had supported individual mandates all along said he didnt support them anymore. Now he says they are an intrusion into private life. What was the signal that he received that it was time to turn against his own idea there . Somebody flipped the switch for him. Or consider congressman paul ryan. Congressman ryan used to love the idea of an economic stimulus. Back when the recession, that stimulus was supposed to cure belonged to a republican president. Now, i just recently read in our local capitol hill newspaper that members from the Majority Party in the other body want stimulus. Theyre breaking with their Party Leadership and asking for stimulus legislation to pass, because in their home states, they have a lot of people who are losing their jobs. What were trying to accomplish is to pass the kinds of legislation that when theyve passed in the past have grown the economy and gotten people back to work. We want to make it easier for employers to keep people employed. We want to make it easier for employers to invest in their businesses, to invest in their employees and to hire people back to work. So, stimulus, yes a stimulus would surely put people back to work and fix this recession. We need a stimulus, so said paul ryan in 2002 when his party controlled the white house. But when president obama thought maybe a stimulus would be a good idea, because we were facing the worst downturn since the great depression, somebody had changed paul ryans channel. We can do better than this. This bill, this economic stimulus package is unworthy of our new president s signature. This is just a long spending wish list from every spending Interest Group thats out there. If youre going to go out and borrow 825,000 so, recraft it for me, congressman ryan. This is not going to work, and thats the concern. This stimulus thing is not going to work. Who would ever think that a stimulus bill would work . Paul ryans change of heart would have been embarrassing on its own, but it got worse when he was forced to admit that his office had requested money from the 2009 stimulus bill, even though he said that they had not. And even though he said the whole thing wouldnt work. If it wouldnt work, then why did you want some to take home with you . That kind of thing thats happened often enough in recent republican politics that its become almost its own kind of humor, like a knockknock joke, or a guy walks into a bar joke. Back in 2010, Senate Republicans wanted a Bipartisan Commission to reduce the deficit. The bill to do just that failed by six votes, with seven of the republican cosponsors voting against it. You guys came up with the idea. You cosponsored it and then you voted against as jokes go it was kind of the one where you ring the doorbell and run. This law failed by seven votes. When seven republicans who had cosponsored the bill, had cosponsored the idea, suddenly walked away from their own proposal after i endorsed it. So, they make a proposal, they sign on to the bill, i say, great, good idea. I turn around, theyre gone what happened . What did happen to the republicans who supported that idea before they voted against it . What happened, for instance, to senator john mccain of arizona . An early and at times impassioned supporter of Immigration Reform on moral principles on pain of rebuke from his own party, john mccain kept pushing comprehensive, compassionate Immigration Reform, because he said he believed deeply that it was the right thing to do, until somebody changed the channel, and all of a sudden, it wasnt the right thing to do anymore. At this point, if your original proposal came to a vote in the senate floor, would you vote for it . It wont. It wont. Thats why we went through the debate of would you . No, i would not. That was john mccain saying no, he would not vote yes on his own bill. John mccain giving up on his own immigration ideas when he was running for president in 2008. He was, i guess, far enough away from his president ial campaign by the time the senate voted on immigration the summer that he had switched back to his old position, which means he executed the rare not just flipflop but flipflopflip on an issue that is supposedly one of great personal conviction and principle. Everybody knows that congress is really unpopular right now. Congress is historically unpopular, unprecedentally unpopular. And part of that is because what congress does when they actually do something, like, say, shut down the government and bring us to the brink of an international default, just for fun. But part of why they are so unpopular may be that aside from the stuff that deliberately hurts the country, they dont really do much of anything else. This chart shows the number of bills passed by Congress Since 1947. 1947 is on the far left side of the screen. And you see it goes up in time as you move to the right. Back there, president harry truman back in 1947, he called that congress the donothing congress because they only passed 900 bills in two years. Look at the last congress under Speaker John Boehner. They only passed 196. And the congress we have now is on pace to be even yet more unproductive. They hit the august recess six bills behind the record Unproductive Congress just before them. And maybe they will have a miraculous flurry of activity in coming months, but they might have to show fup they wanted to do that. The last congress under john boehner was the least Effective Congress in the modern history of congress. The one we have now is on track to be even worse. Republicans and democrats disagree on a lot of things. Republicans and republicans disagree on a lot of things. But after they lost in the white house and they lost in the senate and they lost in the house last year during the last election, the one idea that the Republican Party itself formally recommended to its own members is that they find a way, they find a republican way to say yes to doing something about our broken immigration policy. Find a way, find a republican way to say yes on immigration. And that door is now propped open in front of them, beckoning them to walk through it. A bipartisan bill already passed the senate. If that bipartisan bill was put on the floor of the house today, it would pass the house. Democrats in the house even tried to make it more attractive to republicans by folding in an additional republican Border Security thing that got unanimous bipartisan support in the Homeland SecurityCommittee Last spring. With or without that republican sweetener, if you put it on the floor, it would pass. And then the congress under john boehner would have done one thing, and its the one thing the Republican Party itself says it needs to do. Why cant they do it even when they are doing nothing else at all . Joining us now is jose diazbalart, anchor for telemundos nightly national newscast. His brother is congressman mario diazbalart, one of the republicans who supports doing something on immigration in the house. The congressman was supposed to meet with the president to talk about some specific aspects of reform, but we are now hearing that thats been put on hold. Jose diazbalart, thank you for being with us tonight. Good to see you. Good to see you, rachel. Thank you very much. If it werent so tragic, what youve been talking about, it would be a joke. Its not just funny as a fat joke. The argument that they cant do it because theyre out of time when what they plan on doing is taking more vacation seems to push this into the realm of farce. I almost feel like its bait for them. Theyre trying to change the day yammics in this. Do you have any insight into what will happen next . We look at the fact that theres nothing to do, according to them, and yet, this is an issue that is affecting so many people on a daily basis, rachel. Every day, 1,200 people are deported in this country. You know, maybe the website of the government doesnt work well, but boy are they good at deportations. Yes. And they say that by january of next year, there will have been 2 Million People deported under the obama administration. Rachel, thats the entire population of namibia taken out in five years. And some studies say that as many as 25 of those people deported had u. S. Born children. So, these are families that are being affected. And its not a sumantical discussion were having in some university about the pros and cons of, you know, Immigration Reform as an idea and as a concept. It makes such good Financial Economic sense, it would help in the deficit, it would help in getting the economy even going a lot faster than it has been going. It would also for conservatives that are worried about amnesty and people paying their dues, it would at least let the United States know who the people are that are here, which are the real bad ones and get them out. And then the ones that have been here, many of whom have children, could continue to contribute much more to this economy now that they could at least come out from under the shadows and not fear deportation. So many reasons. Thats why more than 60 of the American People support Immigration Reform. And yet, what is the congress doing . Theyre naming post offices. Well, you know what . This is really tragic. And were letting this slip through our fingers as a nation. And just it seems as though theres no fierce urgency of now, and i dare say i dont see a lot of it by democrats either as far as forcing this issue. The president invited some members of congress that support Immigration Reform, republicans, to the white house today, and five hours later, he canceled that meeting. But you know what . Its in the republican houses responsibility, and they have not done a thing. The arguments that you are making are being made across the political spectrum, including by some of the interests that are usually most influential for republicans, particularly vulnerable republicans. Yeah. Youre getting business interests, for example, coming out, all of these republicanspecific interests coming out and making those very same arguments. I feel like were in one of those rare situations where the argument is actually over, and one side of the argument has won and the reason it hasnt translated into Political Action is just inertia. Its like partisan drag. They dont want to do something the president might like, and so, therefore, they dont want to move forward with it. Democrats maybe dont want to do it because they want to keep blaming republicans for not doing it. If it is just partisan smallness stopping it, what sort of factors can defeat that . I dont see a lot of optimistic factors in the near future if this doesnt get carried out. And i think of, for example, my interviews with mitt romney when he was running for president. Initially in the primaries, he was all for selfdeportation. That 11 Million People would choose to leave this country, many of whom had family members who died trying to get in here and are willing to do whatever it takes to stay in this country. But then when he gets to the general elections, he says that hes for the dream act and even for the president s dream act kids proposal. But then, then, 71 of the hispanic vote, almost 12 Million People, voted against the republicans for the president. So, now theyre all upset, weirded out and worried. But as time passes, their next election i