Republicans voted down a Democratic amendment to the fiscal year 2015 budget bill that would have included funds for so-called comprehensive immigration reform. Media are portraying the gambit as the first major immigration fight of the year but Democrats offered the amendment knowing it wouldn’t pass. The political ploy was meant to put Republicans on the record as voting against the preferred Democratic method of immigration reform.
Democrats tried to sell the amendment as an economic measure that would create jobs and balance the budget. And Rep. Tony Cardenas, D-Calif., the amendment’s sponsor, appealed to Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., to back the measure. “You’ve spoken on reform. I ask you to support my amendment,” Cardenas said.
Although Ryan has been a leading Republican advocate for amnesty and higher immigration levels, he replied, “We don’t support the Senate bill. The Senate bill is over 1,000 pages. We don’t like this way of legislating to begin with.” Ryan said House Republicans support addressing the issue with individual bills that first secure the border, shore up interior enforcement, verify that employees are legally eligible to work and create a guest worker program. And he also said, “(W)e need to give people a chance to get right with the law.”
Republicans defeated the amendment on a 21-15 party-line vote. Even Republicans who have shown some interest in comprehensive amnesty voted against it.
After the vote, the House’s leading comprehensive amnesty supporter, Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., spoke on the House floor. He warned Republicans that if they don’t take up legislation within the next 34 legislative session days (about three months), President Obama will act by fiat. Gutierrez said,
“If you don’t act in the next 34 days – if you refuse to give the President a bill he can sign because you do not trust him to enforce immigration laws, even though he has spent more money and deported more people than any President before him, he will act without you. He has alternatives under existing law…Do you think he will sit by and do nothing just because you are doing nothing?
“The Republicans threaten lawsuits and even impeachment if the President acts to spare American families being broken apart by deportations. But this President will act even if you refuse to act…If you give him no choice, this President is going to take charge himself. And he should. So, once again…we offer a lifeline to Republicans. Work with us to pass a bill before the President – faced with no other choice – takes action himself. You have 34 legislative days left until July 4 and you better make use of them. The American people are waiting.”
