Photo by: Charles Dharapak
House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio Republican, listens to a reporter's question during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 23, 2013. (Associated Press)
House Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday flatly ruled out chances of the House passing the Senate’s immigration bill, saying his chamber will debate its own bill instead.
Mr. Boehner and his top GOP lieutenants issued a joint statement that seemed designed to tamp down some of the momentum behind the Senate bill, which emerged from a Senate committee on a bipartisan 13-5 vote earlier this week, and to stake out a House GOP position.
“While we applaud the progress made by our Senate colleagues, there are numerous ways in which the House will approach the issue differently,” the GOP leaders said in their statement. “The House remains committed to fixing our broken immigration system, but we will not simply take up and accept the bill that is emerging in the Senate if it passes. Rather, through regular order, the House will work its will and produce its own legislation.”
By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times
Thursday, May 23, 2013
Mr. Boehner is playing a proxy game of political checkers with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as a bipartisan gang of lawmakers tries to write a broad immigration deal that would include legal status for illegal immigrants and a rewrite of the legal immigration system.
Even as those lawmakers are working, however, the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees are writing individual bills on border security, agricultural guest-workers and an electronic verification system for businesses to check workers’ legal status — all pieces of the broader immigration debate.
The Senate Judiciary Committee cleared its bill on Tuesday with the support of 10 Democrats and three Republicans, and that legislation heads to the full Senate for what promises to be a bruising and extensive debate next month.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, told reporters on Thursday that getting the immigration bill done is his top priority right now — so much so that he won’t pick any other fights with the GOP so as to avoid upsetting bipartisan momentum. That includes not pushing a contentious vote on President Obama’s Labor Department secretary nominee, Thomas Perez.
“I am not going to do anything to interfere with the immigration bill,” Mr. Reid said.
Already there is some speculation that if a bill emerges from the Senate, Democrats would call on the House to pass it as well.
The House GOP statement seemed designed to shut down that avenue.
“Enacting policy as consequential and complex as immigration reform demands that both chambers of Congress engage in a robust debate and amendment process,” the leaders said.
Mrs. Pelosi said Thursday that one issue holding up the bipartisan House negotiations on immigration is over how insistent Congress should be that the administration create a nationwide electronic verification system to check workers’ legal status.
“If E-Verify is not effectively accomplished in five years, then all of these people revert to the status they have now. I think that’s pretty drastic,” the California Democrat said.
But Mrs. Pelosi shot down reports that she was insisting on broader health coverage for illegal immigrants, saying that she accepts the decision in the 2010 health law that makes them ineligible.
“I’m saying that there is no obstacle to our support of a bill if it says no taxpayer funding. That would be a subsidy in the Affordable Care Act, and it would also be Medicaid,” she said.
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