Immigration Reform Dead This Year?
Syria, the govt. shutdown and O’Care implosion have served to push immigration further down the list of priorities.
House Majority Leader John Boehner announced last week that the House has no intention of conferring with the Senate over its immigration reform bill, effectively killing the legislation for this year. Boehner’s words may be anticlimactic since many inside and outside the Swamp had figured immigration reform a dead issue anyway. No movement has been made since the Senate passed its comprehensive reform package in June. Since that time Syria, the government shutdown and the ObamaCare implosion have served to push immigration further down the list of priorities.
House Republicans were never fans of the comprehensive approach to immigration reform and with good reason. Large sweeping bills like the one proposed by the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are too complex to work effectively (ObamaCare, anyone?). They ultimately become little more than vehicles to shovel gobs of money in numerous directions that have nothing to do with the intended alleged purpose of the legislation. Furthermore, in this particular case the Senate provision did not properly address the issue of border security which the House GOP considers to be the top priority.
The House also had its own Gang of Eight working in secret on a bill for much of Obama’s first term. The idea at the time was to produce a piece of legislation that focused on the enforcement issues that the House GOP wanted to see in any final bill. Their package would provide a counterweight to the Senate’s liberal proposal and give the House leverage in negotiations. But the White House and Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) put pressure on House Democrats to slow down its progress. They feared losing the support of Senate Republicans like Marco Rubio (FL) if the House brought a more conservative bill into the final conference. The Senate got their way, and the House Gang fell apart through attrition from election losses and lack of interest among its members. Fortunately, the White House and the Senate had no strategy beyond getting a bill out of the Senate, and they never realized just how toxic their plan was in the House. Had they known, Boehner’s announcement wouldn’t have come as such a shock.
