A major battle over illegal immigration is looming in the House, where lawmakers are just five votes shy of forcing a vote on a bloc of reform measures that Republican leaders are trying to block.
House Republicans have long maneuvered to avoid a floor debate on immigration reform. But now, they may have no choice.
A group of moderate Republicans say they’ll be able to find 218 lawmaker signatures — mostly Democrats — needed to bring the measure to the floor through a petition to discharge the bills from committee and move them to the floor.
Two GOP lawmakers added their names to the petition Wednesday, bringing the total number of Republican signers to 20. Only five more Republicans are needed to reach the required number to force a vote, assuming all Democrats subsequently sign on.
“We will have more Republicans signing on this week and a lot more Democrats,” Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., who co-authored the petition, said Wednesday.
Republican leaders have been urging the rank and file to avoid using the discharge petition to bring up a vote on immigration, warning it would give the minority the upper hand legislatively and perhaps allow them to pass an immigration bill few Republicans support.
Under the structure authored by Denham and his colleagues, the petition would force a vote on four immigration measures. One, backed mainly by Democrats, would legalize so-called Dreamers, who came here illegally as children.
A second measure, the bipartisan USA Act, would legalize Dreamers and provide a pathway to citizenship in exchange for border security funding.
A third bill, considered the most conservative of the trio and authored by Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., would legalize Dreamers in exchange for border security funding, but also push the E-Verify system so employers don’t hire illegal immigrants, and reduce overall immigration numbers, among other provisions.
A fourth measure would be left open, to be decided by Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. Ryan, who normally has unilateral control over the floor schedule, doesn’t want any part of it.
Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., warned lawmakers early Wednesday in a weekly conference meeting that none of the bills had a chance of making it into law and would be at best a waste of time and, at worst, a political liability heading into the critical midterm elections.
But Denham was unmoved by Ryan’s pitch.
“I disagree with his assessment,” Denham said. “The president continues to tweet about this every other day, that we need border security. There is no reason we can’t have an agreement on both border security and a permanent fix for Dreamers.”
Denham backs the USA Act.
Ryan and other House GOP leaders met Tuesday with Trump to discuss what to do. Ryan later told reporters, “We’re working on it,” but provided no detail of how Republican leaders planned to convince Denham and the other Republicans to abandon the discharge petition.
Ryan said the GOP needs to come up with legislation that can win support in the Senate and from Trump.
Trump has called for an immigration reform measure that most closely resembles the Goodlatte proposal. But that bill cannot even pass the House, never mind the Senate, where Democratic support would be needed.
That’s why House Republicans are worried that, at best, the House would waste time by voting down every bill, but at worst might pass something that Trump doesn’t want.
The possibility of a series of votes has prompted the conservative House Freedom Caucus to offer a way out of the mess. They argue that if the Republican leaders simply bring up the doomed Goodlatte bill, it would force Denham and others to refile their discharge petition, since their petition covers the Goodlatte bill.
That would at least slow down the effort to force a vote on other bills, and keep the House focused on a plan backed by Trump.
House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said in exchange for bringing up the Goodlatte bill, he told GOP leaders he would help get his caucus to vote for the 2019 Farm Bill, which is currently being debated on the House floor and has no Democratic support. Republicans need most of their GOP votes to pass the measure, and many of the HFC’s three dozen members are opposed or undecided, which could put passage in jeopardy.
“We’ve had good conversations with leadership and they understand it’s not a demand, it’s more of a suggestion on how we might be able to get to 218,” Meadows said.
Conservatives tell the Washington Examiner they have long awaited a floor vote on the Goodlatte measure and say Republican leaders promised such a vote in exchange for their support of government funding bills.
Republican leaders said they have been trying to build support for the Goodlatte measure but not enough GOP lawmakers support it. “We want to advance something that has a chance of becoming law,” Ryan said.
