With midterm elections around the corner, quite a few issues will dominate the battle for Congress.
U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) says that legislation his fellow Democrats in the House are proposing following Monday's Hobby Lobby decision by the U.S. Supreme Court will be largely for show.
"We're not going to be able to make any amendments. It's going to be all or nothing and that being the case, we'll stay as is," he said.
Capuano also weighed in on President Obama's announcement of using executive orders to do something on immigration, saying he's noticed a shift in powers from Congress to the president.
"It has nothing to do with President Obama. I felt the same way under President Bush and President Clinton and before that, there has been a shift over time from Congress into the president, to an individual. That's a normal shift. It will shift back. I hope it's a beginning of the shift," he said.
The congressman from Somerville makes says he thinks Democrats made a big mistake for not taking a stand on "porous borders."
"I'm for comprehensive immigration reform, which means a humanitarian approach to the concept of immigration, but also that requires strong, non-porous borders for everyone," he said.
Capuano says the U.S. should send the some-50,000 children who have walked across the border back to their home countries, despite warnings from immigration activists that the children would be in serious danger.
"It's a terrible situation, but you can't pretend that our borders are just open and that someone who sends the most, I don't know, thought-provoking individual, a child, an adult with a serious illness, to the borders. We can't be that country because it will ruin our economy and this is a terrible situation that has been made worse by a lack of an attempt to actually address the immigration problem," he said.
Many, including Broadside host Jim Braude, predicted after the 2012 presidential election that Republicans would act on immigration reform following Mitt Romney's loss as a way to reach out to minorities. However, following Eric Cantor's defeat to his Republican challenger in the primary, the tune of many political observers has changed as it became apparent it wasn't being touched. Capuano says moderate Republicans are held hostage in Washington by their more extreme counterparts.
"Most of us have never met people who are this unreasonable," he said, when talking about how he described these kinds of Republicans to his constituents.
Rep. Capuano also talks about Iraq and ISIS and more.
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