- 10/25/13 –
The Hill
For President Obama and advocates hoping for a House vote on immigration
reform this year, the reality is simple: Fat chance.
Obama repeatedly since the shutdown has sought to turn the nation’s focus
to immigration reform and pressure Republicans to take up the Senate’s bill, or
something similar.
But there are no signs that Republicans are feeling any pressure.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has repeatedly ruled out taking up the
comprehensive Senate bill, and senior Republicans say it is unlikely that the
party, bruised from its internal battle over the government shutdown, will pivot
quickly to an issue that has long rankled conservatives.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a leadership ally, told reporters Wednesday
there is virtually no chance the party would take up immigration reform before
the next round of budget and debt ceiling fights are settled. While that could
happen by December if a budget conference committee strikes an agreement, that
fight is more likely to drag well in 2014: the next deadline for lifting the
debt ceiling, for example, is not until Feb. 7.
“I don’t even think we’ll get to that point until we get these other
problems solved,” Cole said.
He said it was unrealistic to expect the House to be able to tackle what
he called the “divisive and difficult issue” of immigration when it can barely
handle the most basic task of keeping the government’s lights on.
“We’re not sure we can chew gum, let alone walk and chew gum, so let’s
just chew gum for a while,” Cole said.
In a colloquy on the House floor, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) asked
Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to outline the GOP's agenda between now and
the end of 2013.
Cantor rattled off a handful of issues – finishing a farm bill, energy
legislation, more efforts to go after ObamaCare – but immigration reform was
notably absent.
When Hoyer asked Cantor directly on the House floor for an update on
immigration efforts, the majority leader was similarly vague.
“There are plenty of bipartisan
efforts underway and in discussion between members on both sides of the aisle to
try and address what is broken about our immigration system,” Cantor said. “The
committees are still working on this issue, and I expect us to move forward this
year in trying to address reform and what is broken about our
system.”
Immigration reform advocates in both parties have long set the end of the
year as a soft deadline for enacting an overhaul because of the assumption that
it would be impossible to pass such contentious legislation in an election year.
Aides say party leaders have not ruled out bringing up immigration reform
in the next two months, but there is no current plan to do so.
The legislative calendar is also quite limited; because of holidays and
recesses, the House is scheduled to be in session for just five weeks the
remainder of the year.
In recent weeks, however, some advocates have held out hope that the
issue would remain viable for the first few months of 2014, before the midterm
congressional campaigns heat up.
Democrats and immigration reform activists have long vowed to punish
Republicans in 2014 if they stymie reform efforts, and the issue is expected
play prominently in districts with a significant percentage of Hispanic voters
next year.
With the shutdown having sent the GOP’s approval rating plummeting,
Democrats have appealed to Republicans to use immigration reform as a chance to
demonstrate to voters that the two parties can work together and that Congress
can do more than simply careen from crisis to crisis.
“Rather than create problems, let’s prove to the American people that
Washington can
actually solve some problems,” Obama said Thursday in his latest effort to spur
the issue on.
But Republicans largely dismiss that line of thinking and say the
two-week shutdown damaged what little trust between the GOP and Obama there was
at the outset.
“There is a
sincere desire to get it done, but there is also very little goodwill after the
president spent the last two months refusing to work with us,” a House GOP
leadership aide said. “In that way, his approach in the fiscal fights was very
short-sighted: it made his achieving his real priorities much more
difficult.”
Comment:
Once again Mr. Obama has left a hot button issue to languish on the shelf
until the last minute and then trots it out to be dealt with “immediately, if
not sooner”. He has employed this method in the past to divert the public’s
attention away from another issue that is not going well. Unfortunately, it is a
tired old strategy that doesn’t work too well with those who understand the game
of politics. House Republicans are not falling for it this time and the
current session of Congress is very quickly coming to a close. Perhaps, the
President may have gone to the well once too often on this issue. But then
again, he doesn’t have much to lose politically because, as he has reminded us
recently, he is not running for re-election.
Jack Meehan, National President
Emeritus
Ancient Order of Hibernians in America
Irish Immigration
Activist
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