Congressional Republicans seethed while Democrats were cautiously excited on eve of President Obama’s big announcement about his plans to ease deportation laws for millions of people living here illegally.
“I’m looking for big!” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., told the Washington Examiner, when asked what she hoped Obama would say in a prime time address on Thursday.
“What we are hearing is it will be five million people who are now not going to be deported. That’s keeping families together, and that’s huge in my district.”
The president plans to make significant changes to U.S. immigration policy when he announces his plan to unilaterally protect about 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.
Of that 5 million, an estimated 4 million of them would qualify as parents of children who are citizens or legal residents or because of the length of time they have been in the country, multiple sources familiar with the president’s plan confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
House and Senate Republicans Wednesday were simmering in their opposition, many of them plotting a way to try to block Obama’s executive action through the legislative process, perhaps by rescinding money for immigration-related programs in the upcoming government spending bill.
“Recession is the only plan out there that has a track record of past success,” said an aide to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky.
But the GOP’s most conservative faction was talking more extreme options.
“I will note that there is a federal statute that makes it a felony, with up to five years in jail, for anyone who aids or abets a foreigner to come unlawfully into the United States of America,” Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said to a throng of reporters during a round of votes on Wednesday. “And at some point, you have to evaluate whether the president’s conduct aids, abets, encourages or entices foreigners to unlawfully cross into the United States of America.”
For the most part, Republicans were calling for a more measured response among their rank and file, despite the belief among most in the GOP that the president was, indeed, overstepping his authority.
“We don’t respond like third-graders to a third-grader move,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who is the GOP Senate whip, ruled out a government shutdown fight over Obama’s announcement, despite the push from more conservative members not to rule out a fight over funding to stop the executive action.
“There’s not going to be any drama associated with funding the government,” Cornyn announced Wednesday.
Graham, a co-author of the bipartisan Senate immigration reform plan, warned that Obama was making a mistake because polls show the public does not support unilateral action but rather wants Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
“Politically, I think he’s going to get a backlash,” Graham said. “Most people don’t want him to do this by himself.”
The president gave a preview of his prime time remarks at a dinner for 18 congressional Democrats Wednesday evening.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she had other plans and couldn’t make it.
Rep. Steve Lynch of Massachusetts, one of the few remaining House Democratic centrists and no fan of executive action, was not invited.
“I can never support the president going around Congress, even when it’s my own president,” Lynch said. “That just sets a bad precedent. Would we be supporting George W. Bush going around us like this? I don’t think so. It’s the institutional relevance that’s at stake here.”
