Jake Sherman and Ginger Gibson have a good and informative piece in Politico on the way forward for immigration reform in the House of Representatives. At first look, the legislation looks to be in trouble. The primary problem is that Speaker Boehner has promised not to bring the Senate version of the bill up for a vote, has promised to bring nothing up for a vote that doesn’t have the support of the majority of the House Republican caucus, and has assured his caucus that he won’t allow a vote on a Conference Report if the majority of his caucus won’t support it.
So, how on Earth is anything going to pass?
Don’t give up hope, yet, however.
First, let me once again explain how bills become law. At some point, the House will probably pass something related to immigration reform. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive. It doesn’t have to resemble the Senate version in any way. It could be 100% about border security. But some bill will serve as a vehicle to go to a Conference Committee with the Senate.
The way this works is that the House will have a vote on assigning members to serve on the Conference Committee. These members are called “conferees.” There will be a majority vote on this. Either the House agrees to assign conferees or they don’t. The Senate will also go through this process, although their approval of conferees is not in doubt. It matters who gets appointed as conferees. Ordinarily, the chairman and ranking members of the committees with jurisdiction are appointed, but slots are not restricted to them, nor are they guaranteed slots.
Speaker Boehner will not have an easy time convincing the majority of his caucus to assign conferees because he cannot assure them that the Conference Committee will produce a bill that they can support. What he has done, instead, is to assure them that he won’t allow a vote on the Conference Report if the majority doesn’t support it.
In order for a bill to become a law, both Houses have to pass an identical version of the bill. That is what the Conference Report is. House Republicans suspect that the Conference Report will not be a bill that they can support.
In truth, it’s doubtful that the Conference Committee can create a report than the Democrats can support and that the president is willing to sign, that is also acceptable to the majority of the House. In fact, it’s doubtful that they will even try to create something like that. So, the way it looks right now is that the Committee will produce a report than Boehner will reject and that he will not even bring up for a vote.
However, once a report is produced, the only way to judge whether the majority of the House Republicans support it is to do an informal whip count. There is no independent source that can verify if the majority of the House Republicans support it. It could be a close call, or it could be too close to call.
In any case, there will be considerable pressure on the House leadership to convince (or to whip) their members to support the report.
The House appears to be in no hurry to act on immigration reform, with several members predicting that they won’t be ready to vote until the end of the year or even early next year. The longer it takes, the more the 2016 presidential election will emerge as a factor in the Republicans’ thinking. For example, Rep. Paul Ryan, who is part of the leadership team, seems supportive of immigration reform. If he looks like a frontrunner for the nomination and he is arguing that he needs the bill in order to have a fighting chance at winning the presidency, there will be less resistance to passing it.
In this sense, time is on reform’s side. Right now, it looks impossible for the majority of the House to support a pathway to citizenship, but that possibility will grow more likely the closer we get to the 2016 election.
However, the strategy of delay threatens to dampen the momentum for reform created by the 68-32 vote in the Senate. To prevent that from happening, advocates for reform will have to build a movement to pressure the House to stop delaying action.
Ultimately, the House leadership wants to pass reform, but they need to convince their members of the need. They don’t need to convince a majority of their caucus, but they need to get close enough to argue that they have the support they need to test the support they have with a vote.
