While reports the last couple of days provide more indication that the House will not deal with packaged immigration reform this year, that has not deterred Republican Senator Lindsey Graham from advocating that legislation “move forward.”
The following excerpt from Brietbart at first blush might seem to indicate that Graham is only talking about border security. But keep in mind that champions of packaged reform proposals such as the Schumer- Rubio Gang of Eight proposal insist that various verifications regarding border security are written into the proposal to “insure” that security is established. In the mean time, presumably, other aspects of the reform package move forward which are particularly objectionable.
If that is a misapprehension than the question becomes: why the need for a multifaceted package. Why not border / immigration security as stand alone legislation to be passed, and its effectiveness verified, prior to any other immigration proposal moving forward? That is why we think that Graham is still advocating the Gang of Eight style package.
Meanwhile the “can’t trust Obama” theme has proven very effective at stopping the multi-aspect reform that big business interests are clamoring for. The ready availability of low cost foreign but legal labor, much of the true cost of which is shifted to other taxpayers, is what they are after.
A top immigration proponent from the upper chamber, meanwhile, pitched a new argument for why Republicans can trust Obama to enforce any immigration bills they send him.
“80 percent of Americans, if not 90, want to secure the border. So, lets say that for some reason the Obama administration backed away from what Congress mandated – fellow Democrats would get killed,” said Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican up for reelection this fall. “He’s not running again, other people are. This scenario that he could just unilaterally back away from border enforcement and politically that not be damning to the Democratic party… the reason I know that we could move forward with securing the border is the Democratic party would get killed if they didn’t,” Graham said.
Seriously Senator? Official verifications would not come until after it is too late to mount any effective PR challenge to Democrats. Plus, thanks to you, there would be bi- partisan blame for having passed such legislation in the first place. And even if there were likely and timely political repercussions it would still be Obama’s purpose to exercise every delay and subterfuge to thwart actionable verification. He would be safe in doing so through the efforts of the media to dissemble the facts and of Harry Reid blocking any repercussions. In the meantime the other “reforms” move along and all manner of rope a dope bargains will proceed (sufficient Republicans being the dopes) to insure that fallout is limited. Even Senator Rubio doesn’t buy Graham’s BS.
Senator Marco Rubio, another Gang of Eight member, was more pessimistic. Asked if the House should move forward in 2014, Rubio said, “That’s not my role to give them advice on. They’re working on what is a very difficult issue. The resistance they’re running into is a lack of confidence that this president and the federal government will enforce the security measures no matter what they’re written as.”
