Politico
By Burgess Everett and Seung Min Kim
May 14, 2014
Senate
Democratic leaders are building pressure on House Republicans to pursue
immigration reform, warning the window for a new law this year is
rapidly closing.
In
twin speeches on the floor, two Democratic leaders said Wednesday
morning there is still time for the House to pass an immigration bill
and strike a deal with the Senate
before the November midterm elections.
“I
want to be clear what our window is for the House to pass immigration
reform — it is the window between early June and the August recess,”
said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.),
a member of the Senate’s Gang of Eight. “If Speaker [John] Boehner,
Leader [Eric] Cantor and other Republican leaders refuse to schedule a
vote on immigration reform during this window … it will not pass until
2017 at the earliest.”
Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) noted that Wednesday marks 321 days
since his chamber passed a sweeping comprehensive reform bill.
“We
need to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform,” he said. “We
can only do that if the Republicans in the House, led by Speaker
Boehner, do the right thing.”
It
took about two months for the Senate to take its bill from committee to
the floor for final passage in spring 2013 — which means if there’s any
hope for Congress to
pass a new law, the House must start working now.
Schumer’s
comments follow a similar time frame President Barack Obama outlined on
Tuesday when he said there is “maybe a window of two, three months to
get the ball rolling”
in the GOP-led House.
If
the House doesn’t act, Schumer predicted that Republicans will take a
“shellacking” in 2016, giving a Democratic Congress and president the
chance to pass their own
bill. He highlighted remarks Monday by U.S. Chamber of Commerce
President Tom Donohue that the GOP “shouldn’t bother to run a candidate
in 2016” if it doesn’t pass an immigration bill.
In
the meantime, Schumer said GOP inaction would cede ground to Obama to
pursue changes through executive action during his remaining years in
the White House.
“The
president would be more than justified in acting anytime after recess
begins to take whatever changes he feels are necessary to make our
immigration system work better
for those unfairly burdened by our broken laws,” Schumer said.
Michael
Steel, a spokesman for Boehner (R-Ohio), said if Democrats “want to
make progress on this issue, they need a plan to increase the American
peoples’ trust that
the president will enforce the law as written.”
In
prodding the House to act, Senate Democrats couldn’t resist needling
Republicans. Reid dubbed House Republicans “extremists” due to the delay
and accused GOP leaders
of following Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) and his inflammatory language
rather than acting on a bill.
Still, Reid lamented there’s little the Senate can do but prod House Republicans with tough talk at this point.
“In
our system of government, what we did here will have absolutely no
meaning unless the House takes it up,” said Reid, marking the one-year
anniversary of the Senate’s
committee work on its comprehensive reform bill.
For
all the political bickering over immigration legislation, top lawmakers
on Capitol Hill and immigration advocacy groups still see a realistic
window in the next few
months that Congress could finish immigration reform before the year
becomes consumed in campaign politics.
A
vast majority of filing deadlines for primaries have already passed,
and even if primaries were a concern, few Republicans have drawn
challengers who are actively going
after incumbents on immigration. One exception is House Majority Leader
Cantor of Virginia, who has a conservative challenger attacking him on a
variety of issues, including immigration. His primary is June 10.
While
House Republicans have been the prime target on immigration, Democrats
are under considerable pressure as well. Obama has been criticized for
how many immigrants
here illegally he has deported under his tenure, and top Senate
Democrats were targeted by an advocacy group of young immigrants who
believe the party’s lawmakers haven’t done enough to demand Obama halt
deportations.
United
We Dream, which led a protest Tuesday against Democrats near the
Capitol, believes key Democratic lawmakers haven’t done enough to
pressure Obama to stem the number
of deportations, similar to what the president did in 2012 with young
undocumented immigrants. But key Hill Democrats also recognize that
sweeping administrative action on deportations is likely to kill the
prospects of legislative reform on immigration altogether.
A
handful of immigration advocacy groups are scheduled to huddle next
Tuesday with Reid and Democratic members of the Senate Gang of Eight to
strategize on the way forward
over the next few months, several people familiar with the meeting
said. Aside from Schumer, the Democratic members are Sen. Dick Durbin of
Illinois, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Bob Menendez of New Jersey.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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