The Week (Opinion)
By Peter Weber
November 7, 2014
House
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a warning for President Obama, who
suggested earlier this week that he would pursue immigration reform
through executive action. "I've made clear to
the president that if he acts unilaterally on his own outside of his
authority," Boehner said, "he will poison the well and there will be no
chance for immigration reform moving in this Congress."
A
day earlier, Senate Majority Leader-designate Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
issued a similar warning, saying unilateral immigration reform would be
like "waving a red flag in front of a bull."
Republican
National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus taunted Obama, saying the
president has "been talking about immigration reform for seven years,"
suggesting that he's bluffing now.
But it's Republicans who are bluffing. And Obama should call them on it.
Bluffing's
actually an imprecise analogy. It suggests you have cards to play. But
Republicans already played their hand on immigration. The first part of
Boehner's threat is the overt warning
that immigration reform is dead in the Republican-controled Congress if
Obama acts alone. Well, as The Wall Street Journal notes, nobody thinks
the 114th Congress will pass immigration reform anyway.
"In
outlining their plans for the year, neither Mr. Boehner nor Mr.
McConnell put immigration on the agenda," report Carol E. Lee and Peter
Nicholas. "In fact, if Mr. Obama goes through with
an executive action, there will likely be a congressional effort to
undo it."
If
Boehner were going to act on immigration reform, he would have done so
after the Senate passed a bipartisan bill with a filibuster-proof
majority in 2013, shortly after the GOP had identified
winning Latinos as an existential imperative.
In
fact, Lee and Nicholas say in The Wall Street Journal, Boehner and
Obama held secret talks about immigration reform for a year. Obama
agreed to postpone executive action on immigration
until after the summer, to give Boehner time to get a deal made in his
caucus. The talks ended with Boehner's announcement that he's going to
sue Obama over his executive actions.
That
brings us to the second part of Boehner's threat, the part about Obama
acting "unilaterally on his own outside of his authority." Obama, in his
press conference Wednesday, vowed to "take
whatever lawful actions that I can take that I believe will improve the
functioning of our immigration system." You can bet he's not going to
do anything the Justice Department and Office of Legal Counsel think
exceeds his authority. Boehner can sue and see
if a court will mediate — good luck with that.
And
here's the final piece. Boehner and his fellow GOP leaders aren't just
threatening to withhold something they can't deliver anyway — they are
threatening to withhold something they still
need.
Latinos
are angry that Obama threw them under the bus by not acting before the
election, but they still gave Democrats 62 percent of their votes (in a
terrible year for Democrats). As Obama
told Boehner in their discussions, "There will never be another
Republican president again if you don't get a handle on immigration
reform."
Republicans,
traditionally in favor of a robust executive branch, may be hoping that
Obama falls into a trap, enacting unpopular immigration measures and
bolstering their assertion that he's
an imperial president. Maybe the second part will stick, but voters are
with Obama on this issue.
Even
among the Democrat-slaying electorate that showed up on Tuesday, 57
percent favored giving illegal immigrants a path toward legal status.
Republicans
in Congress have every incentive to get stuff done, and every incentive
to make nice with Latinos. Obama has every incentive to show Latinos
who has their back, and that means
making Republicans carry out their pledge to try and block his
small-bore executive actions.
I'm not much of a poker player, but I know whose hand I'd rather have.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment