Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) — House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday it will be difficult to pass an immigration bill because fellow Republicans don't trust President Barack Obama to implement the law, a position that diminishes chances for House action this year.
"There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws," Boehner told reporters in Washington. "It's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes."
While Boehner tries to shift blame to Obama, many House Republicans are wary of engaging in a policy debate that divides the party and risks overshadowing their focus on criticizing the president's health-care law.
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The election-year distraction was the "toughest argument" from House Republicans opposed to advancing immigration bills, Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast this week. So far, Republican leaders, including Boehner, haven't publicly offered an argument about how they'd keep the party together on the issue.
'Really Difficult'
"The conversations that need to take place aren't taking place," said Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who favors a comprehensive immigration measure. "It's going to be really difficult at this point."
Boehner a week ago released a framework for immigration revisions that raised expectations that Congress may come to an agreement this year. The framework was welcomed by Obama and Senator Charles Schumer, the chamber's No. 3 Democrat, though it dropped a number of aspects of the bipartisan bill passed by the Senate last year.
The loudest opposition came from Boehner's fellow Republicans.
House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican facing a primary challenge, said this week there was an "irresolvable conflict" on immigration. Representative Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican aligned with the Tea Party movement, said an immigration push this year should cost Boehner his post.
"It's a mistake for us to have an internal battle in the Republican Party this year about immigration reform," Labrador told reporters yesterday, adding that the policy was "one of the first things we should do next year."
'Take Time'
Asked about Boehner's comments, White House press secretary Jay Carney said today that immigration policies "take time."
"There is a genuine recognition among leaders of the Republican Party that this is the right thing to do for our economy," Carney told reporters. "There is a strong conservative case to be made for passing comprehensive immigration reform."
Schumer told reporters that he was "not thrown back by Speaker Boehner's statement."
"I would urge Speaker Boehner to keep working at it," Schumer said.
Boehner said the distrust for Obama stems from the president's actions on the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the biggest revision to the health-care system since the 1960s. The troubled rollout of Obamacare's health exchanges helped Republicans improve their approval ratings in opinion polls, after voters largely blamed the party for a 16-day partial government shutdown in October.
Boehner said Obama could improve relations with the House by urging the Senate to pass a quartet of bills, including two that the president has said he'd veto. The bills would provide flexible hours to working parents, divert taxpayer funds now used for political conventions, provide job training and allow natural gas pipelines.
"The president is asking us to move one of the biggest bills of his presidency, and yet he's shown very little willingness to work with us on the smallest of things," Boehner said.
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