New York Times
By Ashley Parker and Jonathan Weisman
April 29, 2014
WASHINGTON
— A week after mocking his Republican troops on the issue, Speaker John
A. Boehner returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday with a different
message: Any movement
on an overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws will depend on a new
White House attitude toward Republicans in Congress.
But
Republicans and Democrats, both publicly and privately, suggested that a
narrow window for an immigration bill could open early in the summer —
after most of the midterm
Republican primaries — if Congress and President Obama build
cooperative good will on smaller bills in the coming weeks.
Meeting
with House Republicans behind closed doors on Tuesday, Mr. Boehner
defended his performance in his Ohio district last week, when he called
members of his conference
babies who were whining at the difficulty of moving forward on
immigration legislation. The speaker told his members on Tuesday that he
was simply kidding around, but admitted that perhaps he had gone “a
little too far.”
“You all know me,” he told reporters after the meeting. “You tease the ones you love.”
But
then Mr. Boehner quickly shifted the blame to the president, saying
that Mr. Obama had lost the trust of House Republicans through repeated
changes to his signature
health care law, as well as through his promise to use executive
actions to circumvent Congress whenever possible.
“The
biggest impediment we have in moving immigration reform is that the
American people don’t trust the president to enforce or implement the
law that we may or may not
pass,” Mr. Boehner said. “We’re going to continue to work with our
members, to have discussions and to see if there’s a way forward. But
the president has to take action himself. He’s got to show the American
people and show the Congress that he can be trusted
to implement the law the way it may be passed.”
Mr.
Boehner’s allies said most Republicans took the ribbing in stride. But,
they acknowledged, the House’s hard-core conservatives — many of them
the most ardent opponents
of any immigration bill — still could use the performance against the
speaker.
“I
don’t have a problem with what he did,” said Representative Devin
Nunes, Republican of California and a supporter of an immigration
overhaul. “I know him. He was talking
to his constituents. I do that all the time. You’re just kind of making
fun of people. But you have a group here that wants to create a
spectacle, who are only interested in their own self-aggrandizement to
get on talk radio.”
House
conservatives showed no sign of budging on their position that Mr.
Obama’s executive actions — especially his changes to the Affordable
Care Act — had made him an
untrustworthy partner in the politically delicate task of changing
immigration laws.
“The
president has proven he’s not willing to enforce the laws on the books
in a fair and equal way, and that’s really poisoned the waters on a lot
of issues — and immigration
is clearly one of them,” said Representative Steve Scalise, Republican
of Louisiana and the chairman of the influential and conservative
Republican Study Committee. “Our conference frankly wants to see the
rule of law enforced.”
That
position has kept the prospects for an immigration push bleak, even if
Mr. Boehner wants to move forward. But there are glimmers of
bipartisanship that could ease
tension. Senators are combing through House-passed legislation to see
if there are bills they could accept as-is, or could make slight changes
to before passage. Bipartisan manufacturing and energy-efficiency bills
are on the Senate docket.
A
Republican leadership aide pointed to several smaller issues — a
streamlining of federal job training programs, for instance, or future
trade deals — in which the president
might be able to work with House Republicans to find common ground.
Mr.
Obama is in a precarious position as he faces rising pressure from
immigrant groups to move on his own to stem the deportation of illegal
immigrants and to take other
executive actions, and Republicans appeared to be squeezing him on the
same issue from the right.
Jeh
C. Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, is expected to offer
recommendations in the coming weeks to make the administration’s
deportation policy more humane
— and Republicans warn that any action by the president to ease
deportations could undermine the chances of an immigration compromise
with the Republican-controlled House.
The
speaker “made it clear that there’s one and only one impediment to
immigration reform, and that is the president’s unwillingness to abide
by existing law, and so why
pass new law when he doesn’t abide by existing law?” said
Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. “He actually
doubled down today on our existing position, which is not to move
forward until the president gets right with this.”
House
Republicans also say advocacy organizations pressing for executive
action are not helping their cause. Mr. Nunes said that he still backed
an overhaul, but added
that mass protests, hunger strikes and sit-ins in congressional offices
were backfiring.
“When
they started doing all those protests in August, I told all those
groups you look like partisan hacks,” he said. “It didn’t do the cause
any good.”
An
increasing number of House Republicans, however, are eager to push
through an immigration overhaul this year, even if they cannot quite
articulate a clear path forward.
Last week, Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, sent a
letter to the speaker urging him to “pass meaningful immigration reform
legislation.” And during the Easter break, two Republicans from
Illinois — Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Aaron
Schock — released videos supporting some form of legal status for the
11 million undocumented immigrants in the country.
The window to strike a compromise, members of both parties say, is dwindling.
“It’s
got to be this year,” said Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, Republican
of Florida, who has been outspoken in his support of an immigration
overhaul. “If it doesn’t
happen this year, it doesn’t happen for, I think, a few years.”
Mr.
Diaz-Balart added: “I think you have more and more people realizing
that status quo is unsustainable, is unacceptable, and are having the
courage to stand up to say
we are here to fix things that are broken, and this is clearly broken.”
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