Are drive-through liquor stores coming to Oklahoma?
OKLAHOMA CITY – Oklahomans may soon be able to purchase alcohol through liquor store drive-throughs, thanks to bipartisan legislation that passed the House Appropriations & Budget Committee with a vote of 22-8.
House Bill 2868, authored by A& B Chair Kevin Wallace, R-wellston, allows retail spirit licensees to sell alcoholic beverages in their original, sealed containers via drive-through.
“This bill is about parity,” said the bill’s coauthor Rep. Trish Ranson, D-stillwater. “As alcohol laws continue to be modernized, we need to make sure that our small businesses can keep up with the big box stores.”
The legislation does nothing to remove barriers put in place to curb drinking and driving or dangerous alcohol consumption.
“Drinking and driving is something this body takes seriously,” said Wallace. “This change in state statute doesn’t remove a single safeguard the Legislature has put into place to decrease drinking and driving. Instead, it takes a common-sense approach to protect small businesses who are sole proprietors and local economies.”
House Bill 2868 is now ready to be heard on the House floor.
President Joe Biden’s immigration law plan will have a tough battle in Congress, but could find support for bipartisan, according to information from the news portal of cnbc.
Immigrant advocates and also experts believe that the draft immigration law is not passed in Congress as is.
As is known, President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress proposed comprehensive immigration reform that would offer an eight-year route to naturalize about 11 million people living without permission in the United States.
The measure reflects the general priorities for immigration reform that Biden set on his first day in office, including an increase in the number of visas, more money to process asylum applications and new technology at the border with Mexico.
At a press conference, Rep. Linda Sanchez, Lead Sponsor, D-california, said about US immigration law: “We are pursuing an ‘all of the above’ strategy.”
And then he added: “All options are on the table, and we hope to pass robust immigration reform, but there are other big immigration bills that we will take as well and we hope to pass as well.”
The outlook for Joe Biden’s immigration law route is as follows: Democrats currently have small majorities in both houses of Congress.
In addition, the legislation will need at least 10 votes from Republicans
to rise above the Senate and send the bill to a decisive vote on giving it a green light.
Given this, Jacinta González, the main campaign organizer of the defense group Mijente, said: “There is no one who is saying that there is an easy way for this bill to be approved. We have to be very realistic and honest with our people about that. “
However, all is not lost for the passage of President Joe Biden’s immigration bill.
Advocates admit that it is unlikely that the original plan will be endorsed, however, they see this initiative as a watershed for the legislative movement on immigration reform.
“There are pieces in that bill that have significant support that if taken separately they could be passed into law,” said Jorge Lima, senior vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political advocacy group supported by Charles. Koch.
Legislators have long sought a bipartisan law that has come to be known as the Dream Act that would provide the opportunity to take a route to legal permanent residence and eventual citizenship.
This benefit would only be for some young, undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, known as “Dreamers.”
On the other hand, the surveillance guidelines released by the new government on Thursday will focus more directly the action of immigration authorities on people who represent a danger and are without permission in the country. This point also constitutes a radical departure from the policy of detaining unauthorized immigrants generally applied by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) during the Trump administration.
Broad immigration reform would offer one of the fastest routes to naturalization for any of the proposals in recent years, but it would do so without offering improvements to border security, an issue that in previous immigration negotiations has been used to capture Republican votes. . Without better border security, the project faces severe difficulties in a highly divided Congress.