Republican rep. slams DHS over border security: 'This is not rocket scientry!'

Republican Michigan Congresswoman Candice Miller this week criticized the Obama administration for failing to provide better border security, insisting that it was "not rocket scientry."

A bipartisan group of senators known as the "Gang of Eight" -- led by Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Charles Schumer (D-NY) -- announced Tuesday a comprehensive immigration reform bill that was expected to include a 13-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and $5.5 billion in increased spending on border security over 10 years.

Although the bill would reportedly require border security operations to be fully functional before any of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants could apply for permanent residency or citizenship, many conservative Republicans say the bill doesn't go far enough.

In a Tuesday segment on NPR's Morning Edition, several Republican lawmakers said that they flatly opposed comprehensive immigration reform at this time.

"My position would be if you're serious about securing the border, go secure it and then come back and talk to us," Rep. Steve King (R-IA) quipped.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said that some conservatives could be using concerns about the border as an excuse to perpetually oppose reform.

"I think some kind of false border security number doesn't really get us anything in terms of maximizing border safety," the DHS secretary told a House committee last week. "For those who are seeking immigration reform, the suspicion, quite frankly, is that some sort of false border security metric -- if you could ever decide on one holy grail -- is actually a reason to never get to reform of the underlying system."

But Miller insisted that the Napolitano was just making excuses for a failure to secure the border.

"It is not rocket scientry!" she told NPR. "But to just say, 'well, it's tough, you know, hard to do, so therefore, we can't do it' is not the correct answer."

While the word "scientry" does not officially exist in the English language, Miller may have inadvertently used the term correctly, according to the Urban Dictionary: "The word someone uses in place of science, because it is to early in the morning to speak correctly."

Watch this video from NPR's Morning Edition, broadcast April 16, 2013.

[Image via Candice Miller's official Flickr account]

(h/t: bluntandcranky)