Politico – by JAKE SHERMAN, SEUNG MIN KIM and JOHN BRESNAHAN
The House Republican leadership is reaching out to top House Democrats to assess their support for a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, according to sources involved in the discussions.
The House’s immigration game plan is to pass individual bills rather than take the comprehensive approach advocated by the Senate. Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) team isn’t trying to cut a deal with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), these aides caution. But deeply-divided Republicans want to get a read on what members of the minority party would back when immigration reform comes to the floor.
The legislation under discussion between Republicans and Democrats includes bills reworking the employment verification system and legislation to toughen border security, according to sources both involved in and familiar with the talks. In strategy sessions and planning meetings, Republicans have said that support for immigration reform is soft among GOP lawmakers — and leadership is skeptical that there is backing for anything more drastic than border security and E-verify.
Moving legislation before the August recess is now almost completely out of the question — lawmakers are going to have to spend the month at home, with immigration lingering.
These contacts are in the early stages, but the discussions are aimed at running up big bipartisan majorities for a series of GOP-authored bills, that could counter the bipartisan Senate bill. In short, Democrats would smooth the prospects for passage.
Those talks with Democrats weren’t the focus of a closed-door GOP immigration strategy meeting, which took place Wednesday in the Capitol basement. In that meeting, leadership and bold-faced Republican lawmakers tried to explain that something needs to happen — and soon.
Boehner called the immigration debate “important,” and said Republicans need a plan. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Republicans should present an alternative to the Senate’s plan — just like the party did during the economic stimulus debate in 2009.
More than Cantor and perhaps even Boehner, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is someone who is catching Republicans’ eyes. The 2012 vice presidential nominee and House Budget Committee chair, who has been quietly meeting for months on immigration reform, took to the microphone at Wednesday’s meeting, saying that the GOP needs to tackle immigration — and now. Immigrants, he said, are important to the country’s economic vitality.
The issue might be urgent, but it won’t be smooth. House Republicans face logistical peril by entering into negotiations armed with small bills after Democrats passed a big, aggressive reform package.
The debate will also get lumped in with a busy fall, at a time when Congress will be jousting over government funding and the debt limit.
So, if immigration reform actually happens — far from a certainty — it seems increasingly likely to be tossed into a year-end rush, in a way mirroring the 2012 fiscal cliff panic, the 2010 extension of Bush tax rates and other panicked legislating that Washington has become so accustomed to. But immigration reform will be more challenging: there is no deadline.
Logistics and timing are only two of the reasons this policy debate is challenging. The party is split in multiple directions.
There are two extreme poles in the House Republican Conference, and they were on clear display Wednesday in the Capitol.
In the meeting, which stretched more than two hours, Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) stood up and delivered a speech about the dangers of entering into a formal conference negotiation with the Senate. Conservatives are worried that the House will be forced to accept the bipartisan Senate bill if they enter into those talks. Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) said that his leadership must “commit to certain principles on immigration reform and then we can go to a conference.”
“That’s what we’re coming up with now,” Labrador said.
The tone diverges when people like Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) speak. He has a heavily Hispanic district near Sacramento, and told his colleagues in the closed meeting that there should be “no more excuses, it’s time for action.”
“We need comprehensive immigration reform, but we need a guarantee in this,” Denham said, according to a source in the room. “We need to make sure that we are able to secure the border by using our congressional oversight — not [Homeland Security Secretary] Janet Napolitano, but the power of this body.”
The meeting, and the lack of progress made, is sure to frustrate the corporate interests who are dropping millions of dollars into the effort to reform immigration. There was no real sense about whether the GOP will try to reform the high-skilled and low-skilled visa process, providing a new pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants or how they will tackle the plethora of other issues included in the Senate bill.
Most notably, the party is still deeply divided on what to do about the nearly 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), one of immigration reform’s biggest foes in the House, said the division between Republicans who favor some sort of legalization and those who oppose it is “close to 50-50.”
Lawmakers did seem open to allowing children who were brought here illegally to stay in the country.
“I personally think we could begin at least the process of addressing [that] before the August recess,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said of the so-called DREAMers.
In a somewhat hopeful sign, some conservatives seem to have had their concerns assuaged, for the time being.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), who voted against Boehner in the last speaker election, said he doesn’t believe Boehner will move anything to the floor without the majority of Republicans — a long-running concern on the right.
“The Speaker was very adamant about what he has said very publicly, he’s not going to bring a bill ot the floor unless there is a majority of the Republican conference’s support,” Broun said. “I believe in him and I believe in his word.”
The politics are tricky for a party that has had some harsh rhetoric on immigration in the past. Republicans are cognizant of the dangers of a sharp partisan tone. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the chair of the House Republican Conference, urged Republicans to mind their tone while they talk about the charged issue. She also scolded members for leaking to the press from inside the meeting.
The next steps will be some state huddles. The Texas delegation, for example, will meet tomorrow to discuss what it thinks of the immigration plans.
In a sign of just how tough immigration reform will be in the House, Texas Reps. Sam Johnson and John Carter and Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) — who have been working with Democrats on reform for years — did not brief the party on their House bipartisan bill. That effort is all but forgotten.
— Ginger Gibson contributed to this report.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/immigration-house-republicans-93969_Page2.html#ixzz2YkKisMFA