Obama to Push Amnesty After Budget/Debt Deal-

Obama to Push Amnesty After Budget/Debt Deal

Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 12:09 PM EDT - posted on NumbersUSA

In an interview with Univision, President Obama said he would push the House to move immigration legislation the "day after" Congress reaches a deal on the federal budget and the debt ceiling. Obama also used his last weekly radio address to stress that “comprehensive immigration reform” was his “number-one priority.”
"We had a very strong Democratic and Republican vote in the Senate," Obama said during the Univision interview. "The only thing right now that’s holding it back is again, Speaker Boehner not willing to call the bill on the floor of the House of Representatives. So we’re going to have to get through this crisis that was unnecessary, that was created because of the obsession of a small faction of the Republican Party on the Affordable Care Act. Once that’s done, you know, the day after I’m going to be pushing to say, call a vote on immigration reform. And if I have to join with other advocates and continue to speak out on that, and keep pushing, I’m going to do so because I think it’s really important for the country. And now is the time to do it."
Obama said he believed a deal would be struck by Thursday - the day the Treasury Department set as a deadline for raising the debt ceiling.
After returning from August recess, the House became consumed with discussions over the debt ceiling, the federal budget for fiscal year 2014, and, tangentially, the Affordable Care Act. No deal developed before October 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year, so elements of the government that were not considered “essential” shut down.
House Democrats introduced their own amnesty bill earlier this month in a effort to jumpstart immigration discussions. But House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said the Democrats’ bill was "basically the Senate bill," which he strongly opposes. House Republican leaders, who have promoting piecemeal immigration legislation, have also said immigration would be on the agenda after the budget and debt issues are resolved.
In an October 15 interview with FOX’s Megyn Kelly, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) discussed the ongoing budget/debt standoff, including its focus on the Affordable Care Act. Kelly asked Gohmert, “(W)hy not just stay out of it, if ObamaCare is imploding, stay out of it. Let it implode. And then you guys go to 2014, make the case to the American people, it's a bad law.”
Rep. Gohmert responded, “I know that is one contention, but…if we don't like this to (be the) focus -- we had already heard what was coming. As soon as we got beyond this summer, we were going to have an amnesty bill come to the floor. That is what we would have been talking about, and that is where the pivot would have been if we had not focused America on ObamaCare.”
This suggests Rep. Gohmert had a secondary rationale for pursuing a debate over the Affordable Care Act – delaying House consideration of an amnesty bill.
Read more here. Also see the Kelly interview with Rep. Gohmert.

Subscribe to our News Feed

Related Searches:

• congress
• obama
• amnesty
• immigration reform

• Email this page
• Printer-friendly version
• Digg
• Newsvine
• Facebook
• MySpace
• Twitter