Allah:
Via Breitbart, a rational move if you’re an amnesty shill, no? Obama and Reid know the House won’t pass a mega-bill legalizing all of America’s illegals simply to get O to agree to slow the influx of Central American kids at the border, but that’s okay. When the House ends up choking on this counteroffer, Democrats can get back to their “Republicans hate Latinos or else they’d pass reform” talking points. If they can’t get an amnesty deal out of this crisis, at least they’re going to exploit it to stoke the GOP leadership’s panic over losing Latino voters for good.
Here’s today’s reminder that Democrats will never agree to improve security for the sake of improving security, even during a sustained surge of illegals across the border. There needs to be a concession to make them undertake something so unpalatable.
If House Republicans pass a pared-down funding bill for the border crisis, Senate Democrats are warning they may try to attach the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill to the package…
“The only way any piece of the House proposal could become law is if it was conferenced with the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, which is something we’d certainly consider,” a senior Democratic aide said Tuesday.
The four GOP members of the Senate’s Gang of Eight bill have already warned against any proposal that links President Barack Obama’s request for border aid money with the immigration legislation that cleared the Senate last year with the support of 14 Republicans.
“While we continue to support the goals of comprehensive immigration reform, none of us would support including that bill in legislation needed this year to address the current humanitarian crisis on our southern border,” said Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina plus John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
Border hawks like Mickey Kaus are forever worried that an innocuous House bill on immigration could be transformed during a conference committee into a trojan horse for the Gang of Eight bill, but it’s hard to see that happening if Republican Gang-of-Eighters are themselves opposed to a grand bargain on amnesty right now. As for the House bill itself, Matt Boyle notes that it does nothing to undo Obama’s 2012 amnesty for DREAMers (a.k.a. DACA):
The final legislation that Boehner’s border crisis working group, led by Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), introduced on Tuesday afternoon includes no plan to fight the president on his executive amnesty plans, despite numerous efforts by senior conservative Republicans to get the speaker to do so. Instead, Boehner’s plan offers $659 million for the border crisis and makes a few minor changes in policy that don’t get close to solving what key immigration hawks say is the root cause of the problem: the perennial promise of amnesty to illegal aliens by executive order from President Obama.
Ted Cruz wanted a bill that would end DACA eligibility for future illegals without quite repealing it for illegals already enrolled in the program. That’s a small concession to the political reality with which Republicans have been coping since election day 2012, namely, while they’re willing to delay comprehensive immigration reform and have minor skirmishes with Obama on executive amnesty, they won’t engage in a high-stakes battle for fear of alienating Latinos.
The Senate Democrat “Nomenklatura” (aka ruling class leadership) would likely say to the rest of the Senators “you have to pass this bill to see what’s in it.”