This past week was just a prelude to the administration’s coming action on immigration. Speaker Boehner knows that some kind of action is coming, so he preemptively threatened to sue the president without specifying over what. Meanwhile, the administration has been signaling for months that it would take unilateral executive action if the House of Representatives didn’t act on the Senate’s immigration reform bill. Now, the Democrats are ratcheting up the pressure:
The Obama administration is “not bluffing” in its intent to take executive action on immigration policy if House Republicans don’t act soon, top Democratic leaders warned Thursday.
President Obama has delayed any potential changes to his deportation policy to allow House GOP leaders time to bring legislation to the floor this summer. But if the Republicans don’t act in July, the Democrats say, unilateral changes by Obama are inevitable.
“We’re at the end of the line,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Thursday during a press briefing in the Capitol. “We’re not bluffing by setting a legislative deadline for them to act.
“Their first job is to govern,” Menendez added, “and in the absence of governing, then you see executive actions.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) piled on. Noting that a year has passed since the Senate passed a sweeping immigration reform bill with broad bipartisan support, he urged House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to bring a similar bill to the floor.
“I don’t know how much more time he thinks he needs, but I hope that Speaker Boehner will speak up today,” Durbin said. “And if he does not, the president will borrow the power that is needed to solve the problems of immigration.”
I think “borrow the power” is an interesting phrase that has the potential to become a right-wing media meme. In any case, the GOP plans to compensate for their weakness among Latinos by driving up the passion and commitment of their white, protestant base.
So, “IMPEACH!!!”
