A flurry of legislative activity to address the border crisis is emerging as a major showdown between Tea Partiers and establishment politicians. Conservatives want to take the fight directly to President Barack Obama, whose executive amnesty policies they say is the primary cause of the problem. Leading the charge on the right are Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and Ted Cruz (R-TX), the wily Tea Party freshman. The political establishment, on the other hand, prefers a legislated fix to a 2008 anti-human trafficking law, which they cite as a key cause of the problem. The top players on the establishment’s team are Speaker John Boehner, his working group’s head Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX). Both sides are pulling deep into their benches to fight this battle, and conservatives are framing it as an epic bout that will show lawmakers' true colors—much like the battle to defund Obamacare that Cruz championed last fall. Already in 2014, 57,000 illegal alien children from Central America currently in U.S. government custody have flooded across the southern border. Early in the debate over how to respond to the influx, the Obama administration cited the 2008 law as the major impediment to addressing the deluge, conveniently placing the onus on legislation enacted under President George W. Bush. “The Obama administration says the law is partly responsible for tying its hands in dealing with the current influx of children,” the New York Times’ Washington, D.C., editor Carl Hulse wrote in a July 7 piece. Hulse quoted Bush spokesman Tony Fratto as having praised that law, and Obama White House spokesman Josh Earnest calling for changes to it. The law quickly morphed into the main point of debate surrounding potential fixes to the crisis...
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