White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Friday sought to downplay the defection of 47 House Democrats on a GOP bill to halt the Obama administration’s plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. this year, despite President Obama’s veto threat and last-minute lobbying by administration officials.
“I’m not sure that the analysis holds that the efforts by the White House were counterproductive; they just weren’t as productive as we would have liked,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama en route to Malaysia on Friday.
“I think, just for context, it’s about a third of the House Democratic Caucus who expressed disagreement with our position,” Earnest continued. “The second is that a substantial number of House Democrats have actually made the very same case that [the president] has made about the moral responsibility of the United States and the impact that bringing refugees into the United States has on our leadership and standing in the world.”
Earnest said Obama is willing to work with Congress on tweaking the program to enhance security without outright halting it. The White House has said the House-passed bill would effectively halt the process.
Talks between the administration and Capitol Hill on reforming the program are “a fruitful area for possible bipartisan discussion in pursuit of reforms that actually will have an impact on strengthening national security,” Earnest said.
Proposals for “additional scrutiny and reforms could be useful in enhancing the national security of the United States, which is, of course, the president’s top priority,” he added.
The Homeland Security Department has already instituted some reforms “that will collect more information and impose greater safeguards on those individuals who are seeking to enter the United States,” Earnest said.
The House bill would require “a host of certifications that would only more deeply encumber and make more inefficient a process that already takes up to two years,” Earnest said. “And it’s unclear exactly what it does to enhance national security.”
