Thread: Can a Dusty Legislative Gambit Revive Immigration Reform?

Progressive activists want to use a so-called discharge petition to force a vote

August 19, 2013
By Alex Altman
swampland.time.com

Immigration reform is dying. The majority of voters want it. A broad bipartisan coalition pushed hard to enact it. The timing seemed propitious after the 2012 election. But all the economic arguments, policy papers and polling data marshaled by supporters cannot convince the Republicans who control the House. The best shot in a generation at rewriting U.S. immigration law looks destined to die with a whimper.

And yet there may still be a way to resuscitate reform efforts and force a vote on a path to citizenship. It involves a rarely used parliamentary tactic known as a discharge petition.

The legislative practice enables a simple majority of the House to force a vote on a bill, discharging the relevant committee from its responsibility to report it and circumventing the power of leadership, which controls the floor. Discharge petitions are rare. The tactic was successfully employed just 26 times between 1931 and 2002, when it was most recently leveraged to win a vote on the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance-reform bill. But a cadre of progressive activists, including powerful labor groups like the AFL-CIO and the pro-reform organization America’s Voice, have zeroed in on it as perhaps the best way to sidestep Speaker John Boehner‘s insistence that any immigration bill brought to the floor have the support of a majority of the GOP conference.

“Certainly if the House fails to pass a bill with a path to citizenship and strong worker protections, then the discharge petition has to be an option for us to pursue,” says Tom Snyder, manager of the AFL-CIO citizenship campaign.

The argument that advocates should resort to this dusty legislative gambit is a sign of how sharply the odds of comprehensive reform have fallen. Once bullish, Democratic sources now admit the tapestry of forces aligned behind the Senate bill — including business lobbies, evangelicals, Silicon Valley donors and senior GOP strategists — won’t sway House Republicans. While House leaders have said several immigration proposals will receive individual votes this fall, a large faction of Republicans are loath to pass anything at all, lest Democrats use the ensuing conference committee as a vehicle to jam through provisions they oppose.

Hence the emergence of the discharge petition as an option. With Republicans content to let immigration languish, and a tangle of nasty budget disputes likely to overshadow it, a petition is one plausible mechanism to force the issue. “One of the biggest threats we face is that Republicans will slow-walk immigration reform to death,” Frank Sharry of America’s Voice told the Washington Post. “This is a way to counter that.”

To activate a petition, reform advocates would have to introduce a bill in the House. The legislation would then need to “ripen” for 30 legislative days — or until November, given Congress‘s light work schedule this fall. At that point, supporters would try to cobble together the 218 required signatures to force a vote, using a coalition composed of nearly all Democrats and perhaps up to 20 Republicans.

It is not clear whether the vehicle for the petition would be the bipartisan bill that passed in the Senate, which many Democrats consider flawed. House Democrats considered introducing the measure before scattering for August recess, and decided against it — a sign that many members remain cool to the notion of a parliamentary workaround.

Others still feel the bipartisan group charged with devising a comprehensive House bill remains the best bet to thread an immigration overhaul through the chamber. Many Democrats have written off the group’s labors as a fool’s errand, since it has been reportedly on the verge of releasing its blueprint for six months now. Yet “it’s the best chance we have at getting a comprehensive House bill,” says a Democratic leadership aide. “Introducing the Senate bill could undermine that effort.”

In addition, Democrats want the depth of the GOP’s obstructionism to become clear to voters. “The discharge petition is a tool in the arsenal for the pro-reform side, but it is not ripe yet,” says another Democratic aide briefed on the issue. “The impasse has to be reached before a discharge petition gets traction.”

Historically, discharge petitions have been viewed as a rebuke to House leaders. It’s possible that even the handful of Republicans amenable to comprehensive immigration reform would balk at employing the tactic out of deference to Boehner. Jeff Denham, a California Republican who has said he would support a pathway to citizenship under certain terms, said in a statement to TIME that he “absolutely will not sign a discharge petition.”

Boehner has also been something of a sphinx about his own immigration convictions. Plenty of observers, Republican and Democrat alike, suspect he sides with the majority of GOP senior strategists who believe the party needs a bill to repair its relationship with the nation’s fastest-growing demographic. If that’s true, the argument goes, Boehner might be relieved for a path to passage to materialize without his overt blessing. At the same time, it’s hard to see how Republicans would reap much credit.

It may seem hard to fathom that the momentum to overhaul the broken immigration system has been snuffed out so swiftly. But Democrats who sounded triumphant just weeks ago now privately concede the effort is dying, and a legislative Hail Mary may be the last shot to revive it.

http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/19...ration-reform/

by Mike Flynn 20 Aug 2013, 10:43 AM PDT
breitbart.com



To fully appreciate how dim the prospects of comprehensive immigration reform have become, look no further than the fact that supporters of amnesty are now pinning their hopes on a "discharge petition," a rarely successful tactic that forces a vote in the House against the wishes of leadership. A "discharge petition" allows any piece of legislation to be brought to the floor for a vote, if 218 Representatives endorse it. Chatter about a "discharge petition" usually means legislation is doomed.

Earlier this year, with the backing of the DC GOP establishment, business interests and labor, there were high-hopes of amnesty legislation passing Congress. Those hopes have been dashed on the rocks of a solid conservative bulwark in the House who insists on securing the border and improving internal enforcement of immigration laws before discussing a path to legalization. With the exception of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, House GOP Leadership has insisted that only legislation that has a "majority of the majority" in the House will be considered. Sticking to this so-called "Hastert Rule" renders any amnesty bill DOA in the House.

So, supporters of amnesty are throwing the ultimate "Hail Mary" pass and pushing for a "discharge petition", which would force amnesty legislation to the floor for a vote. Democrats believe that, if they swayed 20 or so Republicans to support amnesty, the House could pass a bill and then conference with the Senate.

There are two big problems with this strategy. First, amnesty supporters have no legislation around which to organize a discharge petition. Despite misdirection from Obama and the media, the Senate hasn't yet sent their "Gang of 8" bill to the House for consideration. There simply is no Senate bill for the House to consider. Likely this is because the Senate bill, in its construction, is unconstitutional.

Supporters of a discharge petition need a piece of legislation to organize around. House legislation providing for comprehensive immigration reform doesn't exist. Earlier this year, the House had its own bi-partisan "gang," but it never produced legislation. The question for backers of this effort is very simple: what bill do you want to discharge for a vote?

The other problem with this strategy is that it relies on a significant number of House Republicans to buck their own leadership. It relies on members of the GOP to resort to a nuclear option against Speaker Boehner. There are no signs this is even a remote possibility.

There is no public groundswell to pass amnesty. Supporters of amnesty promised to flood townhalls this August to press their case. There are few reports this made any meaningful difference. Most polls indicate that the public, including Hispanics, want to see the border secured before there is debate over amnesty. The House GOP seems much closer to the public than the mandarins in the Senate.

A "discharge petition" is noise you make when you've lost an issue. By November, people will have to remind themselves that the GOP spent months debating immigration reform.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...harge-Petition